


Orange is the New Plaid

by posingasme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prison, Episode: s02e19 Folsom Prison Blues, Human Benny, M/M, Medic Benny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-04-28 02:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 27,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5073550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/posingasme/pseuds/posingasme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benny isn't new to the realities of prison life. He's been a medic on staff at several facilities where the inmates are locked into rooms at night. But he's never seen the likes of the Winchesters, and he suspects there's far more to these prisoners than he's been told. </p><p>Most of what he's been told is that these men are ruthless, dangerous, and not to be trusted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Orange

Seeing such a handsome face bruised never ceased to infuriate Benny. And seeing the man with blood on his kind smile made Benny want to hurt someone.

But it wasn't his job to protect him. Sam Winchester was a dangerous man. Everyone said so. He and his brother were so dangerous that medics like Benny were told not even to talk to them. With Dean, that was difficult, because the man was always cracking jokes and laughing in spite of the dismal setting, and Benny had to work at not joining in. With Sam, it was far easier, since Benny's breath stopped and his mouth went dry the minute the man walked into the clinic. It wasn't his job to protect this beautiful prisoner. But it was his job to patch him up, and he hated the frequency with which he found himself doing so.

"What happened this time?" he demanded in exasperation, throwing his hands up.

The guard shrugged. "Scrawny kid shot off his mouth at Gordon and his buddies, and this guy saved us a bunch of paperwork and an investigation by not letting Gordon make a blood streak out of Fitzgerald on the blacktop." He shoved Sam a bit to make him enter the clinic, and then sniffed with disinterest. "I'm right outside, Doc. Shout for me."

Benny frowned deeply. "Because I feel so much safer with his ass nearby."

Sam snickered.

He looked up in surprise. "Sorry. Okay. Come here."

This prisoner was perpetually in ankle chains, attached to his wrist chains. It was a requirement from far up the ladder that Sam and Dean Winchester be shackled anytime they were out of their cells, except for time spent out in the yard. While in the yard, the two of them were never permitted to be in proximity to one another for more than a few seconds, and could never touch one another at all. Benny had even heard that the guard on the tower kept a gun trained on Dean Winchester whenever he was in the yard, and Sam if Dean were not out at the same time.

Benny didn't get it. The men had been convicted of burglary. They had been armed, sure, but with knives. That hardly justified the special considerations. But when he had first joined the staff here, he had questioned it, and the warden had put his hands up in exasperation and muttered, "Henricksen. Just...Henricksen." Benny didn't know who that was, but he could tell he shouldn't ask.

"Will I be patching up Gordon Walker later?" he asked as Sam shuffled to the table and sat.

The large man smirked. "Maybe."

"And he's far worse off than you, I'm guessing."

Sam shrugged. "Shouldn't pick on dentists. They're real mean."

Benny snorted. He leaned in to check the stitches he had just sewn above Sam's eyebrow a week ago. "You didn't rupture my artwork this time. I appreciate that."

The smile would have dropped Benny like a stone if he had seen it over a beer at the bar. Instead, it simply made his stomach squirm. "I protected it specifically. Didn't want another lecture."

He frowned suddenly and looked at Sam's chin. "Somebody else patch you up, Winchester?"

Hazel eyes lifted to gaze into his, and now Benny's stomach wasn't doing well at all. "Plenty of times. Dean doesn't have as good a hand as you've got. But we made do." He shrugged. "And you're not here at night. So I gotta have the other guy's paw on my face then. Don't mind yours as much. Night guy says I keep interrupting his naps with my broken face, he's gonna leave me a nasty scar so I don't forget."

Benny frowned severely. "That's unprofessional."

"He ain't a professional, Doc. Not like you. Pretty sure he's not qualified to stitch a baseball."

He snorted. That was entirely true. As he heard it, the night guy was working nights at a prison clinic because no one could stand to work with him in daylight, and the prisoners seemed to think he showed up drunk for most shifts. He suspected he wasn't at a hospital or in private practice because he knew he wouldn't cut it.

"Doc Benton is a creep. I'd rather bleed out than be under his hands." Sam smiled pleasantly in spite of the morbid talk. "But you. You're clearly not an idiot, you're not drinking the antiseptic, and you're not a complete dick. So? What's your story? How did you end up surrounded by orange jumpsuits four days a week?"

Benny shrugged again, and set to work cleaning the cuts on Sam's knuckles. "I did it as my pro bono in med school, at a women's facility back home."

"Louisiana?" Sam guessed.

He knew he wasn't supposed to talk to this man more than was necessary to provide adequate medical care. But the way those intelligent eyes searched his face lowered his defenses. He often wondered if men as smart as the Winchesters clearly were didn't find themselves in his clinic more often than they really needed to, just because they wanted a bit of stimulus for their minds.

"Your accent," Sam explained softly, as if Benny's hesitation was due to confusion. "Because you sound like Gambit."

"Yeah," he murmured. "Wait, what?"

"Gambit. He's..." Then he saw something he had never seen before. Sam Winchester began to blush pink. "Nevermind. He's a comic character. From New Orleans. A gambler, and a...It doesn't matter. Guy like you probably doesn't care about stupid stuff like that."

"Remy LeBeau? Thieves Guild prince and sometimes X-Man? Yeah. I'm familiar with..." Benny laughed in his quiet way. "With every story he was ever in."

The surprised grin spread until Benny thought Sam's lip would split further. "Yeah? Didn't take you for a comic nerd, Doc!"

"I make an exception for Gambit," he chuckled. "Hold still."

"Sorry."

"Gambit's a hometown hero where I come from. Anyway, I was at the women's facility for a while, few times a month. When Katrina hit, I volunteered at a shelter every free hour I had, trying to do what I could."

Sam nodded, then huffed sheepishly when Benny scowled at him. He went still until Benny was finished mopping at his face and applying ointment.

Benny was pleased to see no stitches would be necessary this time.

"My brother was in New Orleans. I was still in college, but he went down and volunteered for a few weeks. Getting supplies to people, cleanup, that sort of thing. Then he came out to Stanford for me...Well, anyway, that part doesn't matter. Funny to think you and Dean worked the same beat for a while. Even if you ran into each other, you probably wouldn't know him in orange. Green is more his color."

Benny laughed. "Yeah. Maybe so." But he was hit again with the feeling that these boys didn't belong in this facility. He didn't understand how a guy that left his life to volunteer to help others for weeks had ended up with a mandate for transport leg irons and hands cuffed in front, attached to his belly chain, for all circumstances.

Sam lowered his eyes. "I'm gonna live, Doc?"

"Probably. Stop scrapping."

The half-smile and one-shoulder shrug always made him laugh. "Yes, sir. I'll try. Should I just let them kill the dentist kid now, save myself months of trouble down the line?"

"Try not to get yourself hurt. You can't save everyone, Sam."

"No. But we gotta save the ones we can." The big man blinked, as if he had given away too much. "I mean...you know. Hate bullies. I used to be a little guy too, you know?"

Benny snorted doubtfully. "Can't believe that."

"I was. Little. Was never weak, but I was little. Had to learn to use a bigger guy's weight against him before he used it against me."

"Then maybe you'd do better to show Fitzgerald how to do that rather than be his guard dog for the next...How long you got?"

The smile was constant, but the eyes were suddenly filled with haunted anguish. "Hundred twenty-five years without the possibility for parole." Then his grin reemerged, and he winked at Benny. "But I'm already four years in. So just another hundred twenty-one. Practically done already!"

Benny's heart ached. "Yeah," he sighed. "Practically time up."

"So you signing off on me?"

He nodded. His throat was too tight to respond.

Sam nodded too, and hopped off the table, careful not to pull too quickly to a stand, which would jerk at the chains. "Thanks for the patch, Doc. Really." He shuffled toward the door, then turned again. He did not meet Benny's gaze, but the smile had softened. "Thanks for the chat. I know you ain't supposed to. But it gets lonely, you know?" He resumed his way to the door, and called out. "267-49532, Winchester, going from medical back to my cell."

The guard appeared with an irritated sneer. "You don't gotta give me your number every freaking time, Winchester. I know who the hell you are. Smartass. As if there's anybody else it could be. Freaking moose. Go. Walk."

Sam's stitched eyebrow raised, and Benny had a feeling the man was going to pour into a lecture about the regulations about the transport of a prisoner from medical to cell block the whole way back, just to annoy the guard.

He laughed to himself, but it became a sigh as he sat down to complete his paperwork.

Decent humans shouldn't have to thank people for conversation. They should be able to expect to not be barked at or ignored for weeks on end. It made Benny a little sick.

***

Dean had been in solitary for three hours when the guard came for him. He grinned in greeting. "Hey, boss!" he called. "Bringing me the baseball I asked for?"

The man snorted at him. "Because I'm gonna give you anything."

He nodded slowly and grimaced. "I'm guessing you don't watch classic war movies. So how's the eye?"

A treacherous glare turned toward him. The left eye was still swollen and purple.

"Looks great. You'll be back to your modeling gig in no time."

"I'm here to take you to medical. Or I could just leave you here and pretend I forgot Doc said he wanted to see you."

Dean hated the speed and eagerness with which he stood.

The guard watched him. "Lucky you get the good job. Doc wanted your kid brother for it, but that Winchester is taking his turn in here now."

Green eyes darkened. "Sam? What're they putting him in here for? He reading too loud? Disturbing other residents with the fact he doesn't talk, maybe?"

"They said he made pudding outta Gordon Walker on the lawn. He's lucky they didn't shoot his ass."

Pride battled with fear in his stomach, as he reached his hands out to be shackled. "Sammy, he ain't going to hurt nobody didn't have it coming. You know that."

"None of my business one way or another. I'm told to bring you up to help out the Doc, and he gotta come down for four hours of quiet."

Dean cringed. He didn't even notice his hands and ankles being hooked into his belly chain. "Dude. I'll serve it. Tell 'em you got the wrong brother. Honest mistake. Nobody's gonna check; nobody's gonna care. Doc wants him, not me. And I don't need-I'll just do four more. No big deal. You got a Winchester in solitary. Who cares which one?"

The man smirked. "You know, you're right. Nobody would notice. Nobody would care. And maybe on a day when you hadn't closed my eye for me, I'd have thought about doing a favor for you. But knowing you hate your brother getting what he deserves even more than you hate being here yourself, it just brings me pleasure to say screw you." He shoved Dean from the cell rougher than was necessary.

The man bit back a comment about the way the guard generally pleasured himself. Instead, he listened to the heavy footfalls of the boots and fell into the same compulsive habit as always. It was thirty-seven steps from the first door to the second. Automated ID scan. Twenty-one steps to the next door. This was a door that required a manual scan of the guard's ID, and the input of Dean's prisoner number.

"267-49531, Winchester, Dean," he said without thought.

The number gave them access to the elevator. It was excruciatingly slow. Dean had once counted all the way to two hundred eighty before it opened its doors.

By the time they got to the cell block, it had occurred to Dean to wonder what he was heading for. "Wait. What's the Doc got planned? He's just having me...what? Sweep stuff or whatever?"

"This face? The one I'm wearing right now? It's my don't-givva-shit face. Complete with the you-fucked-up-my-damn-eye glare. You should recognize them by now."

"I'm one of your favorites, aren't I?"

The guard sighed as he admitted him into the clinic. "Sad part? You really are. I still hope he's using you for some horror movie experiment."

The doctor looked up from his computer. "No, um, thank you, but the younger brother. Tall one."

Dean smirked. "C'mon, Doc! I'm six one. I can reach anything you need from a high shelf."

"You..." Dr. Lafitte frowned and stood. "Your brother went to college."

The same stab of guilt ran through him as always did when he was reminded how completely he had screwed up Sam's life. "Yeah. A little." He swallowed and turned back to the guard. "See? He wants Sam. I'm happy with my lot in life. I work the cafeteria line. I'm good. He wants to experiment on the smart one. Go get Sam."

"This is all I can do, Doc. Warden's orders. Sam's heading for solitary." He finally smirked at Dean. "The stupid one will have to do. One of us will be right outside."

The doctor stared after him.

Dean smiled. "Sorry you're stuck with the lesser brother. Whatcha need done, Doc?"

Dr. Lafitte sighed. "I certainly wasn't intending to imply-"

"I know. My brother's always been the brains of this operation. But I'm a good grunt. You gotta have something that I can do."

"Your brother. He's heading for solitary?"

Dean's smile faltered just for an instant. "Yeah. Sammy, he likes being by himself. Hardly a punishment for him."

"It's a punishment for everyone."

Green eyes narrowed. "Sammy's a tough kid. And he knew what would happen when he hit Walker."

"Hit him! It looked like he'd been attacked by an entire gang!"

Dean burst into laughter. "That's my boy!" This smile stayed fixed, but something in Dean was aching. He couldn't help it. "Miss him, you know? Only times they let me see the kid, when we can eat at the same time, maybe two or three times a week, and when we're out at the same time. Even then..."

The doctor was nodding. "Even then, you ain't allowed within two feet of each other."

He huffed sadly, and looked down at his cuffs. "Yeah." Then he brightened. "But it's been worse. Almost a year he was at that other place. Phone calls were it, you know? Learned to write letters to each other. I don't think him or me had ever wrote a letter in our lives before that. Email, till he wasn't allowed to do that anymore."

Dr. Lafitte sat back in his chair. "How can they tell him he can't have access to email."

"They won't let him near a computer since he hacked into a bunch of Stanford professors' private class forums."

"Why'd he do that?"

Dean shrugged. "He was bored. They probably wouldn't have caught him, but he kept posting responses to comments about application of law, and somebody finally noticed he wasn't registered for the class. He isn't allowed near any of the computers now. So? What can I do for you?" he asked again. After far too long doing nothing, Dean wanted to be useful. And he liked Dr. Lafitte. Just like Sam, the doctor didn't belong in this place. He didn't fit in here the way Dean did.

"Oh. Yeah, I've just asked for a guy to come and help me with things like disinfecting and keeping things in order."

He smiled in amusement. "Yeah? I got enough of a college degree for that."


	2. Shark's Gotta Eat

"Warden keeps saying how lucky we are to be here instead of State," Sam grumbled as he dropped a tray down next to his brother's. "But I was in State for eleven months. Crap tastes the same to me."

Dean's mouth was full. "What? Maybe I made this crap!"

"You didn't," Sam sighed. He pushed at the pasta on the plate in disgust. "I can always tell when you've been in the kitchen, because the shit is actually cooked." He held up a fork full of undercooked noodles, and dropped it back on the plate. 

"Okay. No, I didn't cook it. But it ain't so bad."

Sam lifted his gaze. Some days he wondered if Dean had adapted to prison life far too well. "What were you doing? If they took you off kitchen?"

"Working with Doc in the clinic." Dean choked down the peas and corn they had eaten nearly every day for years. It was one of the things they didn't tell people about prison. Three meals a day meant the same three meals every day year round. 

Sam stared. "Did you say working with Doc? How'd that happen?"

His brother shrugged. "He wanted you. But you kicked Gordon's ass, so..."

"Gordon? That was days ago! How long you been doing this?"

"Three shifts. Beats the hell out of the hot kitchen."

"How'd you get that gig?"

Dean looked up. "Told you. He wanted a Winchester, I was available and you weren't. Nice work on Gordon, by the way. Whole block can hear him snore now that you broke the dude's nose. Thanks for that."

"Whatever. He's a prick." Sam sighed down at his food, and played with it again. "What are we doing here, man? Seriously."

Dean's eyes flashed with pain. "You know."

"We can get out any time you're ready."

"Not without killing somebody, and we ain't willing to do that. Are we? You changing your mind about our moral code?"

He wasn't. But every few months, they had to talk this out, to remind one another. "What about the folks out there we aren't saving? The ones who die because we aren't on the job?"

"That's not us killing them. You made that distinction yourself, in the beginning, when that was my argument. That taking out a few guards might be worth it if it gets us back on the job. You said no, that if we don't think we can pull it off without somebody getting killed, we don't do it at all."

"Yeah, well, all the guards that aren't assholes have left this year. I'm rethinking my stance on killing the ones we got left."

"No you're not."

No, he wasn't. But he wanted out. This gig was supposed to be short term. There wasn't anyplace that could hold a Winchester for long. But the FBI guy and his buddies at the local level had done some special work on the boys' files. They had even managed to separate the brothers for a time, and that had truly crippled them. And even now that they were in the same facility again...If one had escaped, there was no telling what the other would be put through. They couldn't take that chance. They had to go together or not at all. And getting them both out without anyone dying, including one of them, had not seemed possible yet. Days and weeks, months and years were flying by without much hope of seeing their freedom again. Leg irons and handcuffs on a belly chain were their reality now. 

"No," he said quietly. "But I wish I were."

"They're gonna separate us soon. Eat, Sammy."

He looked up and grimaced. "I read everything." His voice was pitiful, and he hated it. 

"What?"

"Everything. Most of it twice or more. I thought...I've read everything here. And you know they won't let me order anything from the exchange."

Dean frowned sharply. "What? Why can't you order stuff?"

"Because I'm Sam Winchester."

His brother's hand came down on the table with a bang. "That's ridiculous! That's bullshit!"

"Shh!" Sam said urgently. "Don't call attention." They said that at least once every time they were permitted to interact, because calling attention to themselves generally got them separated immediately. Sam needed his brother desperately right now. 

"That's got to be against some law or something!" Dean hissed, quieter now. 

Sam smirked. "Oh, you mean the Kansan Inmates Inter-Library Loan Rights legislation that passed recently?"

Dean threw his hands up in frustration. 

"They provide books here. I can't demand anything else just because I read all this stuff. And Henricksen thought of everything. Every possible way to make us miserable. He knew there would come a day when I had read everything here, and I'd want to order something new, and they'd tell me I'm not on the approved list. And he probably got somebody to snap a picture of the look on my face, and he's got it up on his wall like a trophy."

"I'll order something for you."

"You think you're on the list?"

Dean scowled. 

"No. I'll call in the favor from the dentist whose ass I saved. Make him order me some nonfiction. It just sucks so bad I can't get my own goddamn books."

The look on Dean's face was full of heartache. "Sammy, I know I said it before...But I'm so sorry. So sorry I made you leave school and end up here."

"I'm not sorry I left school, Dean. People are alive because of us. That chick from the apple orchard cult. You know? People like that. Our happiness for all those people's lives?"

"No contest," Dean murmured. 

"I just wish we hadn't been dumb enough to get caught by Henricksen and the rest of his thugs."

Dean smiled softly. "Gave him a good chase though, didn't we?"

"That's why he hated us so much."

"You think anyone here knows?"

Sam sighed. "Knows what?"

Dean shrugged. "We never went to trial?"

"Probably not. Why would they? Everybody gets court time. Why would they think to wonder if we did?"

"They pieced some stuff together over at State."

Sam's anger burned in his veins. "Yeah. They had help."

His brother's eyes widened, and his voice dropped even quieter. "You never told me that!"

He snarled. "I warned Henricksen if he tried to keep us separated he was going to have to answer some awkward questions about our arrest and supposed convictions. Took a while, but I said the right things to the right people, and they started getting curious about my background, made some calls to Henricksen's office. I was shipped back here in under a week."

"I never knew that! You risked-"

"I'll play this game if I have to. But I'm not doing it without my brother."

Dean began to smile. He reached across the table to touch Sam's arm. His own cuffs restricted him, but he made do. 

Immediately, one of the guards swept in. "That's enough. Maintain your distance."

Sam watched his big brother's teeth bare like an animal. "Dean," he warned. 

The older man clamped down on the rage. "Yes, sir, boss," he said through his clenched bite. "Sorry to trouble you."

The guard looked like he wanted to smack Dean in the back of the head, but refrained. "Two more minutes, Winchester."

"Yes, sir," they each sighed. 

***

The monster that had taken the form of Victor Henricksen was smirking to himself just at that very moment. He was reading the reports from his colleagues down at the research facility. They were nearly ready to begin human trials, and wanted his opinion on where to conduct them. "Where better than that fine facility in Kansas where our friends are rotting?"

Mr. Roman's smile was full of teeth. "Perfect."


	3. Hilts

Benny was chuckling quietly to himself. It was always a better day when Dean was there to help out. For one thing, the clinic had never been so meticulously clean and organized. College or no college, Dean was extremely smart, and he had been aching for a challenge for his brain, and Benny had provided him with years of neglected supply closets and files, then the man had attacked the rest of the space with something like relief. It was as though this were the first chance he had gotten to improve something for four years, and it delighted him. Benny smirked to think of what old Doc Benton thought of the newly organized clinic. 

Then he had found the ancient journals, and Dean had poured through them in fascination. All the time he read through them, he kept murmuring that this was just the sort of thing Sam would geek out over. Benny kindly did not point out that Dean was doing just that. 

It was also nice to have the constant stream of chatter in the clinic. Benny himself was quiet by nature, but he enjoyed listening to stories, and Dean certainly had stories. He especially liked the ones that gave a bit of insight into Sam. 

He could not have said why Sam interested him so much. Sure, he was handsome and smart, but he was also a convict. Benny wasn't that messed up. If he were, he wouldn't be working there. Orange jumpsuits were a minus for him when he was sizing up a man. But Sam seemed so out of place here. If it weren't for the fact that he had never seen the man walk a full stride without the impediment of the leg irons, Benny might have forgotten he was a prisoner at all. 

"Why do they let your brother keep his hair long?" he asked suddenly. 

Dean looked up. "What?"

Benny cleared his throat. "Sam's hair. It's longer than most. Some facilities don't care, but I know this one does."

The man laughed. "Three and a half years of pre-law at Stanford University, and my baby brother uses it to protect his vanity. He just argued until they were sick of hearing him talk. He's lucky they didn't just shave it off. I guess," Dean continued after a moment of thoughtful silence, "Sam hasn't had a whole lot in his life that was his. Everything we had, we shared between us, and we didn't have much to begin with. My dad must have threatened the kid with shears a thousand times. Sam would pitch a bitch, and Dad would drop it. When you got no control over anything in your life, I guess you fight for what little you got. He knew the regulation to the centimeter, and I think he's willing to throw punches if anybody cuts past that." 

Benny was smiling at him over his paperwork. "But you?"

Dean ran a hand through his cropped hair. "Nah. I'm too pretty to keep it longer than this."

The doctor laughed at the thought, and nodded in agreement. "Maybe. But I meant, what would be worth fighting for in your mind?"

A soft smile came over Dean's face then, but it was marred by a look of pain in the green eyes. "Family. No question. And folks who can't fight for themselves." Then he snorted. "I'd say my car, but I haven't seen her for four years. Other guys have girls pinned in the cells. I got pictures of my Baby."

This made Benny smile in surprise. "What is she? And where?"

The flash of grinning white teeth let Benny know he was in for a long story. The medic listened to Dean boast about the love of his life, who was being cared for by a friend of the family. But he let his mind wander back to Sam. 

Sam had a stubborn, spiteful side that probably had been cultivated as the little brother of a man with such a large personality as Dean had. Benny could never help snickering when he heard the guards complain that the Winchester boy was reading law books and new legislation briefs again. He seemed to do it only to annoy them. 

At the end of the third week of working with Dean, Benny had spoken in a low voice while the man was restocking supplies. "Dean? Why don't you and your brother fight about the stuff that matters?"

"What's that mean?"

"You two notoriously enjoy pissing off the guards by being smartasses, and your brother prides himself on knowing every correctional code that's ever been written down. So why don't you two fight the things they do to you specifically? Things you know wouldn't pass the bullshit test?"

Dean smiled wearily. "You mean the leg irons."

"For a start."

The man looked especially tired today. He continued to smile, but shook his head. "Some things you can fight and some you can't. Not without making stuff a whole lot worse."

"How could it be worse?"

"When we first got here? I was in solitary for two weeks right outta the gate."

Benny's mouth dropped. "They can't...they can't do that!"

A clipped laugh punched out of Dean's chest. "Sure they can, Doc. Just ain't supposed to, that's all." His green eyes lowered. "And when I finally got back to the block, Sam had been transferred."

Benny could see the remembered despair on Dean's face. "That must've been awful," he murmured. 

Surprise pulled a smile from Dean. "Yeah," he said quietly. As Benny watched, Dean's face went hard and his eyes widened. "Speak of the freaking devil," he muttered, and he jumped to his feet. 

Sam was being carried in by two large guards. Each had hold of an arm, and his weight was lurching in their support. The sound he made was something between a groan and a growl. 

Benny couldn't decide if he was sick or if he had been punched in the stomach, the way he was bent over. 

"The hell happened?" Dean shrieked. 

The warden followed behind. "Get him out of here!"

Benny saw the fear and rage in Dean's eyes. "No! I need him here," the doctor put in quickly. 

The warden turned to stare at his medic. "You don't give orders here, son. This ain't a hospital. I said-"

Dean shrugged off the guard who tried to take his arm, and dropped down to his knees to look into Sam's face. "Sammy? What happened to you, man? What's going on?"

"Dean!" the younger man screamed in a guttural tone. "Hilts!"

Benny watched Dean's face turn gray-pale. Shock overtook the anger, and he stood slowly, every muscle coiled. "39?"

"Now!"

Before another man could move, Dean sprang into motion. In Benny's mind, things seemed to move in slow motion, and he couldn't process the sounds everyone was making. His only clear thought was useless, as he spent it on appreciating how like dancers Sam and Dean looked when they fought. Choreographed dancers, who had spent a lifetime as training partners, and each could anticipate every detail of how his brother would move in this closed space. The warden's gun was in Dean's hand, and the warden was on the floor, and the first guard was falling over him, and Dean was kicking him sharply in the head, just once, and the other guard was choking against Sam's cuffs, and then he dropped too, and the heavy door slammed and locked, then...

And then it was over as fast as it had begun. 

"Jesus, Sammy!" Dean barked. "Hurry up, will you? You couldn't have had me pick my irons before signaling? A little warning? Huh? What's wrong with you?"

The younger brother did not respond. He fiddled with his own leg and hand cuffs, then dropped them to the floor and leapt up to help Dean with his. 

That was when Benny realized why Dean wasn't moving. "Oh," he said stupidly. 

Dean gave him a grim smile. "Sorry, Doc. Had to be you."

Sam tossed Dean's shackles across the room. Then he yanked an ID from each of the unconscious men on the ground, and shoved them at Benny, who took them silently. "Doc, do exactly what we tell you, and you're going to be fine. Long as the guards don't shoot you. We ain't gonna hurt you. But they don't know that. For all they'll know, these guards are dead, and we'll kill you too. You hear me?"

Benny nodded. He had trouble glancing away from the gun Dean had trained on him. "Are they? Dead?"

"Nobody has to die if everybody listens," Sam responded quietly. "You listening, Doc?"

"Yes," he whispered. "Yes, I hear you."

"Warden's dead," Dean corrected. "I put him on the ground, dude, but you snapped his neck. What the hell? I thought..."

Benny's eyes closed briefly, and his stomach lurched. 

Sam sent him a sharp look, as they heard alarms begin going off around them. "Warden was part of the problem."

Dean frowned severely. "Animal, vegetable or-"

"Mandroid," Sam supplied with sarcasm in his voice. "Had the laser eyes. Come on. I'll tell you later. They're locking down."

Dean nodded slowly. "Sam, you know more. Call the play." 

When Benny thought back on it all, he realized this was probably not how the dynamic generally worked between the brothers. Dean was probably used to giving the orders. But he didn't hesitate to follow them when Sam barked.

"Give him to me."

Benny wouldn't have admitted it even to himself, but he had indulged in the fantasy of a man, roughly six foot four, two hundred pounds of hard muscle gripping him so close he could smell him, and maybe he had even had a Kansan accent. But this was hardly what he had in mind.

"Doc, you're gonna be fine. You're gonna get us out, then you can go home and file a lawsuit against Kansas for letting two madmen take you hostage, and you can retire early. But only if you do what we say to do. You're smart enough to walk out of this just fine."

Dean had pulled out of his jumpsuit, then grabbed the guns from the guards, and held one on Benny so Sam could do the same. By now, they could hear the pounding feet all around them. 

Benny looked at the men in their white tee shirts and pants, and tried to concentrate on breathing. He believed Sam when he said these two wouldn't hurt him, though he couldn't have said why, considering what they had done to the warden. But he had also heard what Sam had said about the guards shooting him, and he had felt far less confident about that. 

"Sammy."

"Close quarters. Humans will care about him, but..."

"What are they?"

Sam's eyes turned to Dean, and Benny's heart dropped when he saw the fear in them. "Dean, I don't know."

The older man took a breath, and Benny could feel the shift. Dean was in charge now. "Okay, little brother. We get as far as we can. We keep Doc safe. How do we know who is what? What did you see?"

"Almost like...Dean, it's like some kind of..."

"Breathe. It's like riding a bike. Start with the warden."

Sam nodded quickly. "Shifter."

Dean's frown deepened. "Can't be. You broke its neck."

"I know, but...Look, I can't explain it. It's like they're weaker somehow. Like something isn't right with them. Besides, I shoved my silver in his side just in case. You got yours?"

"What? You keep it in your freaking hair? No, I don't got mine! How would I get it past..."

Benny cleared his throat as the boys went still. "Is silence a good thing?" he asked quietly. 

The alarms and pounding had come to an abrupt stop. There was no noise coming from the other side of the clinic door. 

"Why aren't they trying to get in? They waiting us out? They wouldn't risk the Doc like that. Or these guards, and sure as hell not the warden. You think..."

"Dean, what if..." Sam lowered his gun and went to the door to listen. 

Benny swallowed hard. "There's a set of cameras," he murmured. "It shows the hall." He pointed to his computer. Dean gave him a nod, and he moved to access the cameras on his screen. 

Then he sucked his breath in through his teeth. 

He clicked through every set of cameras he had access to. Every floor was the same. Limp bodies were everywhere, prisoners and guards alike. None were moving. No one in the entire prison was moving. 

"Sammy? What the hell are we dealing with here?"

Hazel eyes lifted to stare into green. He said it again, and he sounded younger than Benny had ever heard him. "Dean, I don't know."


	4. Bad Gateway

Dean took a long breath. "Okay. You said the warden was a shifter. Start with that. Apparently we got time. I ain't going out there till I know what you know. And test the Doc, will you?"

"With what silver?" Sam snapped. He hated the panic in his throat. It had been too long. Dean could say it was like riding a bike all he wanted, but Dean had never taken years away from hunting. Sam had. He knew what it was like to lose years' worth of steps. And this wasn't like Stanford, where he could run every day and keep up with his research of lore, even if he would never tell John or Dean that he had done so. He had even taken boxing as his physical education requirement, just to keep up with his training.

In prison, the best he could do was jump into a fight whenever he saw one about to happen, and spend as much time in the gym as he could. He had driven cell mates crazy-when he had them-by working out in the cell. He had been tempted to tell them it could save their lives someday, but he was pretty aware of how that sounded.

So the result was that Sam had more muscle mass than he had ever had before, but was sorely out of shape all the same. His brain was out of the game.

And he could tell by the look on Dean's face that he saw it too.

"Sammy. Come on, man. You put your silver in the warden. Warden's dead."

He swallowed hard. "Right." He grabbed for the slip of silver he had always kept hidden no matter where they sent him. They hadn't been able to take his rosary, and he had used the last of his money to buy a silver one. Generally, the metal would not be allowed, but one of the nicer guards had been Catholic, and he had let it go for so long that even after he had moved on to another facility, no one had bothered giving him a hard time about it. This facility, Sam had learned quickly, seemed to run by its own rules.

Maybe because the warden was a shifter.

Dean smiled grimly. "Rosary. Smart."

"All purpose weapon," Sam sighed. He had slammed the cross into the side of the warden's throat. It made a horrible noise as he removed it. "Sort of thing I was starting to think I'd never hear again," he grumbled.

Dean flashed him a grin. "Just when you think you're out, they pull you back in, eh, Sammy?"

His brother was enjoying this entirely too much.

Sam approached the medic who was sitting at the computer, quietly watching. He took hold of the man's hand, felt the nearly imperceptible flinch. Sam frowned and wiped the cross on his own pants before touching it to the medic's skin. He murmured some Latin. He breathed with relief when it was clear there was no reaction to the silver or the words.

He stood again. "He's human, so far as we're going to be able to tell in here."

"Good. If there's any one guy I'd like to see make it out of this hole, it's Doc."

The other man lifted an eyebrow. "You used me as a hostage."

"Yeah. But it was either that or put you down like the guards there. Okay, Sam. How did you know?"

Sam took a breath. "Keep watching these cameras. Anything moves, you say so." He looked away from the medic and focused on his brother. "I was in the mess hall. They were serving something different."

"What's that mean? Something different."

"What's it sound like? It was some kind of meatloaf or something. I was in line, and the guy in the back, the old guy, Rufus, he started bitching about stuff."

"Rufus is always bitching about something. Guy's nuts, Sam."

"Yeah, but not like this. He was getting all riled up. And I'm looking around the rest of the room, and everybody else is spaced out. Zoned out. Just gone. Except the guards and Rufus. They're trying to calm him down, and he's just trashing the kitchen. Took way too many guys to put him down. Like he was on something."

Dean was frowning. "Okay."

"Rest of them were like zombies, man. Like completely gone. It was like the whole place had smoked a bunch of pot, except Rufus got the brown acid."

"How many people?"

Sam and Dean both turned. "What?"

The medic cleared his throat. "They all ate the same thing. How many?"

Sam shrugged. "All of them. Except the guards. And me. I caught sight of the warden in the camera, his eyes flashing, and he saw that I saw, and I needed to get out of there."

"So the whole population ate something, and you think it affected them. But at least one had an adverse affect. There's an additive in the food? I should have been informed of anything like that. That's not..." The doctor sighed. "That's not legal. You're standing there talking about things not being human, and I'm worried about legality of drugging inmates' food."

Dean shook his head. "Sam, what about the guards? What's out there now? You think it's safe to-"

"It's a gas," the doctor whispered. He pushed back from his desk. "Look at the camera. Here, just before they fall." Dr. Lafitte looked up at Sam. "Are...are you two so dangerous that they'd drug a whole community and then gas it? How...how can they do that?"

The brothers watched the video surveillance. The doctor was right. The rest of the prison had clearly been exposed to something toxic.

Sam licked at his lips. "We can't go out there. And we can't stay here."

"But those people!" Dean argued. "Maybe...maybe they ain't dead!"

The younger man nodded. "We gotta know. Doc? Look. We can't wait this out. If they're dead, we gotta get out of here. If they're alive, we gotta help them. You on board with this?"

The physician shrugged in bewilderment. "I...guess?"

Sam realized the man's drawl was becoming thicker. He frowned. "Dean? How you feeling right now?"

"I smell something." He closed his eyes and sighed. "Tell me that's rotting shifter I smell."

Sam snorted. "Who would guess that'd ever be what you wanted to hear?"

Dean squeezed one eye closed, then the other, then opened them wide. "Awesome. Doc, you got anything in here that's going to get us all the way to the exit without the gas taking us down too?"

Dr. Lafitte chewed on his lip. Sam caught himself watching, and shook his head to refocus. There was a time and place, and this was neither. "Best thing," he drawled out, "I reckon would be to cover our faces in wet rags. And run like hell."

Sam watched Dean leap toward the sanitation station and grab at the clean towels and gauze. "Dean, the guards," he said softly.

His brother nodded. "You get Hefty over there. I can take Cole. Doc? You gotta help Sam, okay? Hefty ain't called that because he reminds us of garbage. Well. Not only because of that. We get outside, we'll call it a victory and decide on our next step. But if what took down everybody out there in under a minute is seeping in here, we got no time." He grabbed Cole and lifted his head. Sam watched as he placed gauze over his mouth and nose and eyes, then used an adhesive wrap to secure it. He tossed the supplies to Sam. "Ain't pretty, but it'll do." He heaved the unconscious guard onto his shoulder and groaned. "Jackass is heavier than he looks!" He put his wet rag over his own mouth and nose and pushed open the door awkwardly.

By then, Sam and the medic were ready. They each supported Hefty's bulk, and Sam was impressed by Dr. Lafitte's apparent strength. But one look at the man's glassy eyes told him they had better hurry.

It was the longest four hundred thirty-nine steps of Sam's life. As they passed the bodies in the halls, it was instantly clear there were no survivors. This was an intentional, deadly attack meant to kill them all. Vacant stares and bloody mouths greeted them at every corner. Sam gagged into his rag several times.

Just as they hit the exit, using the warden and doctor's badges to unlock the heavy doors, Sam heard a crash behind them. He dropped Hefty with a thud and joined Dean and the medic in coughing and gulping in fresh air. Dean ripped the wrap from Cole while Dr. Lafitte did the same for his charge.

Sam swallowed hard. "Somebody in there, Dean," he choked hoarsely.

"No," Dean wheezed. "No, it's...they're all gone!"

An unmistakable sound filled Sam's ears then. He turned to Dean in horror. "Oh my god!"

The three of them looked back at the facility in shock and dread. Sure enough, flames were taking hold of the buildings.

"Sammy! Come on! Let's get out of here!" Dean was already dragging Cole into a position where he could lift him again.

"Somebody in there, Dean!" he shouted back.

"Sam, no! Come on! Dammit, Sammy! Somebody's making damn sure nobody's left alive here! Including us! Maybe especially us! So we gotta go now!"

Sam shook his head. He looked into the doctor's gaze for a moment, then took a deep breath and raced back into the building, just as the fire roared to a feverish storm. He could hear the screaming behind him, but he blocked it out to focus on the crashing sound inside. He moved toward the interior, still clutching the warden's credentials. There was just a moment when Sam thought the gas must be dissipating, before there was smoke everywhere he looked.

At last, he located the thrashing man, cuffed to a railing. He scrambled for the keys, and had to shove the prisoner into the wall to keep him from swinging at him. Finally, he freed him from his handcuffs and they both tore out of the building while fire took it in waves behind them.

Sam ran. It had been a very long time since he had been able to run, and these horrible shoes were certainly not made for it. But he made his way, and just hoped the man in orange behind him was able to do the same.

He could see the doctor holding Dean back from diving into the building.

"Dean!" he shouted breathlessly. "Dean! Let's go!"

His brother was cursing wildly, but upon seeing Sam sweeping Hefty up on his way through, he stumbled to follow with Cole. The other prisoner grabbed Hefty's other arm and flung it over his shoulder without missing a step. The doctor did the same with Cole.

"Where?" Sam shouted through abused vocal cords.

But instead of Dean, it was the other prisoner who spoke. "I got a place!"

And that was when the brothers realized they had been joined by crazy old Rufus.


	5. Back in Black

"Wanna tell me again why we aren't just calling the police? Why we're hiding up in here like some..."

Dean smiled at Cole grimly. "Like some criminals? That what you want to say, Trenton?"

The cabin was wet, but it was secluded. Sam and Dean had to give credit that was due. Rufus had come through. Buckets of crazy, that man, but he knew how to lay low, and that wasn't nothing.

"Come on, man! It's not rocket surgery. Somebody don't want witnesses to something. Don't know what we supposed to have witnessed. Except the warden was a damn shifter. But ain't like they run in packs."

Sam looked up from where he was watching the medic checking on Hefty. "What did you just say?"

Rufus shrugged. "Thought I was among Winchesters here. A shifter. Warden's a shifter."

"Was a shifter," Dean corrected. "He's dead. But how'd you know?"

"I got eyes, don't I?" Rufus peeled back a board from the floor of the cabin where he had been tinkering. He grinned triumphantly. "Haha! Was starting to think the old cuss came and stole it!"

Sam stared at the man as he pulled a full bottle of Johnny Walker Blue out of the floor panel, as well as a metal lock box. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dr. Lafitte seem to flinch at the sight of it. He frowned.

"You a hunter, Rufus?" Dean was demanding.

"Of course I'm a hunter. And you're John Winchester's boys. What?"

Sam shook his head in disbelief. "Dean, what are the chances of us being locked away with another hunter in a place where the warden's a shifter, and they're willing to kill the inmates, guards and staff, then set fire to the place?"

Rufus snorted as he opened his bottle. "Don't be flattered. I been locked up in a dozen different places. You were bound to end up in the same joint as me eventually."

"How you know our dad?"

The older man looked up at Dean. "I don't. Don't want to either. Nothing gets you killed faster than working with another hunter. Especially a Winchester."

"What the hell are you all talking about?"

Everyone seemed to have forgotten Cole was conscious.

Dean sighed. "You need another black eye? Shut up and let the grownups talk." He ripped open a gas station granola bar and shoved it in Cole's mouth, then turned back to Sam. "Guy was special ops in the military before this gig as a guard. Cuffs ain't going to hold him forever, dude. How's Hefty?"

The doctor cleared his throat. "There's something strange about his condition. He's not hurt. It's almost like he's just...asleep."

Sam frowned at Dean. "Where's my rosary?"

His brother fished it out of his bag and tossed it to him. "What are we thinking?"

"I don't know. Some animals react to stress by playing dead or going into a sort of hibernation, don't they, Doc?"

"Some do."

He could hear his brother chamber a bullet behind him, and heard the snicking sound of Rufus pulling a blade out of somewhere. The doctor stepped back, and Cole took in a muffled breath.

He pressed the rosary onto the guard's arm.

Immediately, the man winced and cried out. Sam leapt backward and pulled the weapon he had taken from the guard himself. By the time the man opened his eyes, there were three weapons and a silver rosary aimed at him.

He groaned. "Plata," he sighed miserably.

Sam narrowed his eyes. "Damn right it's silver. What are you?"

Hefty blinked several times at the weapons surrounding him. He gave another sigh. "Winchesters," he mumbled, and it sounded like a curse. "You really are hunters. Warden Reidy warned me. I said he was crazy. Said you boys were too stupid to be hunters. Asesinos psicóticos."

Sam's lip curled into a snarl. He had been cell mate to a murderer from Ecuador for nearly two years, until a few months ago. It had been an excellent opportunity to move beyond his very basic Spanish vocabulary. "Who's the psycho, cerdo monstruoso? I said what the hell are you?"

Hefty glowered at him. "Likhichiri," he spat.

"Sam?" Dean called warily.

But it was Rufus who spoke up. "You a pishtaco?" he demanded.

"A-a what?" Dean stammered. "A fish taco?"

"Pishtaco, you imbécil!" Hefty shouted back.

Rufus sighed. "A likhichiri is a Bolivian pishtaco. A fat sucker."

"A what?"

This time, Sam could see both Hefty and Rufus rolling their eyes.

"How are you even still alive?" Rufus snapped at Dean. Then he moved forward to squat down in front of the likhichiri. "Never saw one myself. Buddy of mine did once. Bobby Singer put one down in New Mexico."

Sam and Dean both sucked in their breath. "You know Bobby?"

"Ain't nobody don't know that old crank. You boys are guests in my place, so I'm gonna ask you to take this one into that room there, and figure out what you're gonna do with the doc. I'm gonna be busy with this thing for a bit. He's gonna tell me everything he knows, and then I'm gonna figure if he lives longer than tonight."

"What the hell-"

Cole was cut off by Dean grabbing hold of him. "Sammy, you got Doc. Bobby trusts this guy, that's all I need to know."

Sam was less sure. "We need to call Bobby," he said.

Dean waved a cellphone at him. "Sure. Warden's making the call himself. He donated it to the cause."

His brother rolled his eyes. "All right. Doc and I...We'll be in here. We're gonna need a supply run. I'm not looking forward to putting my face out in public till we have more to go on. As far as I can tell from what I could get out of the guy at the gas place, they think there were no survivors. I'd like to keep it that way. Fire even burned through the car lot. It'll take them a long while before they figure out one is missing."

Dean nodded. "I'll get Bobby on the horn, and see if he knows somebody close by that can help us out."

Rufus gestured at them to remove themselves. Hefty was snarling at him angrily. But the handcuffs were doing their job.

Sam didn't know what to make of Rufus. But he claimed to be a friend of Bobby's, and he was confident enough to handle this thing on his own. He was exhausted himself, and after four years of being on the inside, sitting on the bench for this particular interrogation didn't sound like a bad idea. He was still grateful to be able to take a full step with his long legs. Everything else could wait or be managed by someone else for now. Sam felt he had earned taking a step back, at least for a few hours.

Dr. Lafitte went with him into the next room. It was just as dark and damp in that space, but it was quieter. Sam closed the door behind him and leaned against it, closing his eyes.

The doctor cleared his throat. He seemed to be doing that as a way of asking permission to speak. "You all right?"

"It's been a really long time since I moved one room to another, opened my own door, without somebody guarding me. Without leg irons." He smirked dryly. "I never talked to you without somebody right outside waiting to beat me senseless with no questions asked, if you told them to, Doc."

The other man winced. "I never thought of it that way before."

"Only way I can think of it, Doc."

"Benny."

Sam frowned. "What?"

"My name is Benny. You saved my life today. I think that earns you the right to call me by my first name."

A slow grin broke over the hunter's face. He let himself look at the doctor finally, really look at him, like he had always wanted to do but never let himself. "Still think I'm too dangerous to talk to, Benny?"

The man's smile was full of perfect white teeth. The way his eyes crinkled with his amusement made the muscles in Sam's stomach tremble with giddiness that was completely out of place in the context of the day they'd had.

"Well?"

"Now, Sam," he drawled teasingly, "I never did say that myself. But I'm afraid I'll have to agree with the warden on one thing. You ain't a boy to be messed with."

The corner of his mouth slipped into a smirk. "Yeah? Well, you handled yourself better than any civilian I ever met."

"Ain't always been a civilian. Worked as military medic for a long time."

He shrugged. "Still a civilian to me and my brother. Anybody who isn't in the life is a civilian."

His eyes wandered to the bed. They had each rushed in to the bathroom for cold showers and privacy upon reaching the cabin. But this was the first chance Sam had gotten to look at the rooms. Small, of course, but dry enough. Army issue blankets were folded and piled on the floor in the corner. Jugs of water were collected under the bed, and each had a rosary swimming in it. Upon opening the closet door, Sam began laughing.

Benny watched him. "What is it?"

"Crazy old Rufus," he snorted. "Guy's a pro." He stepped back to reveal a wall full of mounted weaponry, of every variety Sam could ever have wanted. Part of him ached to begin stripping and cleaning every one of them. "Never thought I'd miss that chore," he muttered to himself. He took one last appreciative look at the wall, and closed the doors again.

"This is a bit over my pay grade."

Sam laughed again. "Way under it, Benny. Hunting is the most dangerous volunteer work you can imagine. Never did get my paychecks. I made more working for pennies on the inside than I ever did hunting." He looked under the bed and found a duffel bag. Inside were tees, boxers and socks, and a dozen washcloths. "Good man, Rufus Turner. Knows a guy can only run so long before he'd kill for this stuff. Clean. A luxury in our line of work, you know?"

Benny lowered himself to sit on the bed slowly. "May I finally know what line of work that is?"

"Oh." Sam turned to stare at him. "We're hunters."

"Gathered that much."

"We hunt monsters. Ghosts, mostly. Spirits. Or we did. I-I guess we still do."

"Is that what's hunting us now?"

Sam sighed. "Maybe. You want to run, me and Dean, we won't stop you. I think you're safer with us. But you're free to go if you think that's better."

Benny watched his eyes for a moment. "No. I'm thinking ya'll know more about this than I do. I just found out the guy who filed my contract and the guard I played checkers with on slow days weren't human. I'm gonna go with your gut on this one."

"Could be worse," Sam smirked. "Could have been vampires. Fangs are the biggest pains in the ass."

"And here I am without my stakes and garlic."

"Machete," Sam muttered without meaning to. "I mean...that's what...You have to cut their heads off. They're brutal."

"No kidding?" Benny responded dryly.

He reached for one of the tees Rufus had stowed away. If he really was a friend of Bobby's, they'd find a way to pay the guy back. He stripped off his white shirt and replaced it quickly with the clean black one. He smirked down at it. "Been years since I wore anything but white or orange."

"Recognize yourself?" Benny gestured toward the cracked mirror on the wall.

The young man looked himself over with curiosity. Other than the tiny shaving mirrors, there were few reflective surfaces Sam had spent much time with over the years. He hadn't wanted to see himself in the prison jumpsuit. It was humiliating. John Winchester's boys, in a prison like common criminals. It was bad enough he had to see Dean that way.

"Mostly," he answered finally. "I'm sure Sam's still in there somewhere."

"I'm looking forward to meeting him."

A surprised smile brightened Sam's face when he looked at Benny through the mirror. He laughed a little. "Yeah," he murmured. "Me too."


	6. Losing His Head

It was the strangest day of Benny's life by far. And Benny had lived some pretty strange days.

There were noises coming from the living area of the cabin that he did not want to think about. But he couldn't block it out. "Sam?" he said softly. "Rufus. Is he gonna torture that boy?"

Sam took a deep breath. "He's not a boy. He's a monster. But...no. Dean and I won't let that happen. It'll probably get a little rough. We gotta know what he knows. But I don't think it'll go beyond that."

"But you're not sure. And what about Cole Trenton? He's a good man."

"Dean would have already tested him by now. We'd know if he weren't human. Probably. And he seemed as confused as he should have by all this. Just like you, he'll be free to go once we think he's safe. Now, if he wants to chance it, but I think he'll be smart enough to not run off on his own. You got family, Doc?"

"Benny," he reminded him.

A soft smile played on Sam's handsome face. "Benny," he repeated.

"No. Not really." The physician sat on the bed again and sighed. They had been in the room for a while now, and he was very tired. He watched Sam pace restlessly. He looked good in the black shirt, which was clearly a size too small for him. As his medic, Benny had known how built the man was. But he had never gotten the chance to just gaze at him outside a professional capacity. It occurred to him that he was now unemployed. He sighed.

"Cole does, I think. Wife, at least. He's going to want to get back to her. But that's only going to put her in danger. If whoever or whatever did this finds out he's alive, they'll do what they have to in order to fix that. Better his wife thinks he's dead for now than go home and make it true."

"You and your brother. You lived like this. Didn't you?"

"Pretty much. When I wasn't at school."

Benny nodded. "Why were you two singled out for excessive measures? And if you could escape anytime...You had more than a life sentence. A lifetime sentence with no possibility for parole and no appeal. So why did you wait till now?"

Sam sighed. He leaned against the wall and slid down till he was sitting across the room. His long legs sprawled in front of him. He stared at his large hands for a moment before answering. "They had some significant leverage over us," he murmured.

"What?"

"One another. One of us stepped out of line, we were promised an accident for the other. Some things, they didn't care about. I could get in fights all I wanted. That was just me being punished for that. But if I filed for a review or asked for a lawyer, I was told Dean wouldn't live through the night. If I told anybody we never got a trial, they'd make sure he never walked again, and that was best case scenario."

Benny's lips parted in shock. "You never got a trial? How is that..."

Sam cleared his throat. "Lot of things that weren't supposed to happen did. And nothing I could do if I didn't want them taking it out on Dean. And they knew we would never risk one of us getting out without the other. So they didn't let us talk or get within two feet of each other, so we couldn't plan anything. We did anyway. Dean and me...We could make our way with just a few looks at each other. But we couldn't figure how to get out without having to gank at least two guards. And we weren't...We're killers, but we ain't murderers. You know? We killed to save folks who couldn't defend themselves."

Benny remembered Dean saying just hours before that was one of the things worth fighting for. He smiled. "And Hilts?"

The hunter looked at him with startled eyes. "Hilts?"

"It's what you said to Dean just before you two killed the warden and knocked out those other two."

The laugh was becoming easier.

Sam had been refused conversation by the staff, and had been purposely placed with cell mates who exclusively spoke foreign languages. Benny had gone through as much of Sam's records as he was allowed to do. He had brought up to the warden the frequency with which solitary confinement was used for minor infractions, and the way the man's interactions with other prisoners was severely limited throughout the day. The warden had been unconcerned, and had blamed everything on the arresting agent. Now he knew there had been no trial and threats of violence to keep the brothers passive in spite of their treatment.

So it was no wonder the man seemed to be unsure about how to speak with Benny. There was a shy, insecure quality about the hunter that was completely mismatched with his physical strength and intelligence.

"Hilts?" Benny murmured again.

"Yeah. Um, you ever see The Great Escape? The movie?"

"Maybe. I don't recall."

Sam's smile dipped as his eyes hid behind his hair again. He was staring at his hands again. "It's a true story. Mostly, I mean. Hollywood, and all that. But the 39ers...Virgil Hilts was the cooler king. He was Steve McQueen's character. So...Hilts means escape."

Benny nodded. "Sam, you're an interesting person."

Hazel eyes lifted to meet his gaze, then dropped back down to his hands. "No. Stuff around me is interesting. I'm kind of just the thing in the middle of it all. Dean's interesting. I'm sort of his shadow."

"He says you're the brains."

Sam snorted softly. "Only because he doesn't give himself credit. I'm smart. But that's all I am. Dean, he's got the head for all this stuff. I'm just here to pull his ass out of the fire now and then."

"I find you...real interesting," Benny confessed in a quiet drawl. He put his hands behind his back. "Everybody I know just got wiped out by monsters. Human or otherwise. And I didn't know any of them well enough to call them friends. So you're officially the closest thing I got to a friend in a thousand miles. And you had a gun on my face part of today. Is that the saddest thing you ever heard?"

Sam stood and walked hesitantly to sit on the bed corner furthest from where Benny was propped against the wall where a headboard was meant to be. He watched the doctor intently, though he said nothing.

Sam's proximity was making him anxious. Part of him couldn't get the image of this man cracking the warden's neck out of his mind. Another part couldn't forget the way he had run into a burning building full of deadly gas and monsters in order to save one more person, while his brother screamed in horror and heartbreak behind him. It had been everything he could do to keep the older man from diving into the smoke after his little brother. Looking at the sincerity and curiosity in Sam's face now, it was not hard for Benny to see how Dean could love the man so much. It was not hard to imagine caring for Sam himself.

He licked at his lips and lowered his eyes. "I don't go out much. I work and I go home."

"Because of alcohol," Sam guessed abruptly, then his face lost some of its color. "I-I mean...I just...noticed how you looked at the Johnny Walker Rufus had, and...You didn't react that strongly to anything else that happened all day. You were completely cool under literal fire. Then the bottle..."

A wave of shame washed through him, and he angrily shoved it down. There was no one to blame but himself for his humiliation. Benny had never been weak, not in any way. He was smarter than most men, stronger than most men, and he could adapt to any situation; today was proof of that. And he had conquered the only monster that had ever scared him, hadn't had a drink in three years. But there would never be a time when he wasn't thirsty.

"I'm sorry," Sam said again. "I got no right to..."

"No. No, you're right. Least I don't show up to work drunk like Benton, and then keep drinking all shift. Dean found his stash while cleaning out the old file boxes."

"My dad was an alcoholic. Dean probably could be too. I'm a bit more careful, because I know it can run in the family. Course, four years of forced sobriety probably helped."

"It's been three years for me," he responded with a faraway stare. "Since I lost my husband. He made it clear getting sober was too little too late, but I did it anyway. I knew if I didn't, I'd drink myself to death after he left."

Anguish flashed across Sam's eyes. "I'm so sorry, Benny."

He shrugged. "Wasn't meant to be. I think we were done anyway. We got together real young, and I think we weren't real smart about it. But I loved him. Might not have stayed in love with him. But he was my family. You know?"

Sam nodded sadly. "Yeah. There was a guy at school. Jess. He...Well, he died, and...Anyway, I had four years to think about it, and I don't think it would have ended right between us. He didn't know my background, what my family does. So I don't know if it could have worked, always having to tell half-truths. But when he died, it was like my last chance had gone with him."

Benny nodded. "Him, huh?"

To his surprise, Sam laughed at that. "Yeah. Him. That was us coming out to each other, right? Using pronouns we might not have normally used. Jess is a pretty neutral name. Could have been a woman."

"So's Andy. Yeah," he chuckled as a blush heated his beard. "I guess that's us setting the record straight."

"I prefer to think of it as setting the record gay."

Benny laughed, and the bed shook under him. "You're interesting, all right, Sam."

"So you said."

He took a deep breath through his nose and could smell a pleasant excitement in the air, one he had not felt for a very long time. And why not? He was being hunted by monsters. The world thought he was already dead. He had no job, no family, no friends. There was no reason to grieve a life he'd been bad at, and no reason to not reach for something new. If there was anyone who could give him a little of what he had been missing, he wanted it to be this man. And this man had just expressed a mutual interest by making it clear he was also attracted to men.

And the guy had literally just gotten out of prison.

Benny smirked. "Does it count as Stockholm if you saved my life and aren't holding me against my will?"

Sam's grin burst with sunshine. There was nothing predatory about the way he inched up the bed toward Benny's pounding heart. "You're the doc. You tell me."

"I remember meeting you, you know," he murmured, just quietly enough for Sam to have to move forward further to hear him. "You had two cracked ribs."

Sam winced. "It was almost worth the pain to get time in the clinic with you. Even if you weren't supposed to talk to me."

"I hate that I was always patching you up, Sam. But it pissed me off when you needed patching and I wasn't there to be the one to do it."

The eyes were shining now. "I hate that I didn't get to hear that Gambit voice of yours."

There was silence after the chuckling. Benny looked up. "Is it...Is it over? You think he killed him?"

Sam shook his head, and stood. "Doubt it. Stay here, okay?"

The medic nodded. He watched Sam head to the closet. He picked a machete off the wall and gripped it tightly. Benny could see the ropes of muscles writhe in his forearms as he did so. Then the grip relaxed, and Sam stood straighter, and he left to see what was going on outside the room.

Benny stood too. He was not unfamiliar with weapons himself. He had been military, after all. He didn't know if he was more worried about the monster or the hunters, but he felt justified in taking a much smaller knife from the wall and concealing it in his clothing. Then he pressed himself against the wall next to the door, so that he could see who entered before they saw him.

He half-expected to hear sounds of a fight ensue. But there were low voices, and he could hear Sam sighing. He crept closer to the door to hear.

"How have you been feeding, Hefty?"

"Screw you, Winchester."

"Wrong answer, man. See, right now, we're deciding if you're making it out of this room. Your bosses clearly want you dead. We ain't so sure we want you alive. So try again. How have you been feeding?"

Benny could hear the thing that was Hefty begin to snarl. "I feed on monsters like you," he hissed. "They told me, in that place no one would know and no one would care. Even if I screwed up and took too much, killed a few here and there, who cares about a bunch of inmates? You're the monsters, cazador. You kill for sport. I just needed to eat. And now I know you're more than just a pain in my ass, now that I know you're a hunter? You're gonna be my next meal, Winchester. You think I won't get out of this? Sleep light, cazador. I'm coming for you. Then just for fun, I'll take your brother too."

"Wrong thing to say to a Winchester," Benny murmured to himself.

There was a sickening sound and a small thud followed by a large one. Benny closed his eyes.

"That's all I needed to know," Sam responded belatedly.

"Kind of puts the moral dilemma out of our hands when he goes all James Bond villain and tells us his plans," Rufus remarked. "I'll get this cleaned up. You go sleep as hard as you want, kid. Ain't nothing getting past me. I'll wake you for a shift about four."

"Thanks, Rufus. Dean and Trenton okay?"

"Ain't sure who's guarding who, but they're fine. Nobody's cuffed down anymore, and I'm near to certain we're all humans. So there's that."

"Right. Goodnight, man."

"The Doc is armed. The small Bowie with the black grip, I would think. Makes a bit of a tanging sound when it comes off the wall. One of my favorite knives. I'm only cleaning up one body today, so one of you kills the other, you gotta clean it up yourself."

Sam's smile was in his voice. "I'll keep it in mind," he promised. When he stepped back into the room, he sighed. "I'll put mine down if you do the same."

Benny smiled grimly. "Couldn't be sure it would be you coming back in here. That Rufus guy is good."

"Scary good. What kind of lunatic knows the sounds of his weapons coming off a wall?"

Seeing Sam wiping blood spatter off his throat while placing the blade that had clearly just cut the head off monster onto the small table, Benny gave him a smirk. "Because Rufus is the strangest thing in this cabin, right?"

Sam looked up. "Rufus is strange even for a hunter. But he seems like a good guy."

Benny sighed. "He get the information he was hoping for?"

"Some. About half the guards weren't human, though they obviously could each pass as one. They were transferring all the human guards like Cole out of the place gradually. Those the others didn't just eat. You would have been in that category, it looks like."

"Lovely." Benny cleared his throat. "Who the hell would have gone out looking for monsters to run a prison?"

"I don't know. And it kind of scares the shit out of me."

Benny put his knife next to Sam's. "You're not exactly filling me with confidence."

"For now, we're okay. We gotta get some sleep. No telling what tomorrow will throw at us. You take the bed, Doc. I'm going to camp on the floor just outside the door. Anything comes, they'll have to move through me to get in here. You'll be good to sleep. Unless...You haven't changed your mind about leaving, have you?"

"After what I just heard? No. I feel better taking my chances with the Winchester boys than on my own out there, not knowing what's looking for survivors. And if whatever did this to us considered you two too dangerous to let out of leg irons? I'll consider you the better team to join. I like the idea they're scared of you two."

Sam flashed a grin at him. "Careful, Doc. Somebody might start to think you're enjoying this."

"Most fun I've had in years," he responded sarcastically.

The hunter nodded. "Me too," he said, and winked before turning back to the weapons cache.

Benny wondered if perhaps one of them wasn't joking.


	7. Monster

"Teach me everything."

With those three words, Cole's entire perception of the world was shattered. Dean Winchester had grinned when he'd said it. 

"You sure you want to know?"

Cole had nodded. "You say there's stuff out there, and I believe you. You say there's stuff that could hurt my wife and kid, something that tried to kill me today. I believe you. So now you tell me everything you know. Everything I need to know in order to protect my family. If you aren't the bad guy, Winchester, I need to know who is."

There was a level of respect in the man's eyes that Cole was certain he had never seen. "All right, then," he had sighed. "But it ain't pretty." The smile remained, but softened as they got down to business. 

The former military officer had done two tours in Iraq. Special ops. Darfur. The Congo. He had seen suicide bombers and child soldiers so hopped up on speed that they could barely talk, but they could sure as hell shoot an AK. He had met his share of monsters. And as shocking as Dean Winchester's stories were, he realized there wasn't that much of a difference. Maybe he had been trained to fight against human monsters. But he was damn good at it. He could learn this too. 

Cole had never been too proud to learn what someone had to teach him. It was part of why he was as good as he was. He was willing to learn from anyone who knew more than he did. Soldiers who thought they knew everything died awfully quick. Soldiers willing to listen were the ones who got to go home to their families. 

So Cole listened, late into the night, declining each of Dean's suggestions that he sleep. When the hunter paused for too long, Cole asked a question to keep him going. 

At last, it was clear that the one who needed the rest was Dean himself. "So," he had smirked wearily. "Am I still one of your favorites?"

Cole gave him a grim smile. "Sad thing? You really are."

Dean smacked him on the arm and stood. "Get some rest. Unless you want to take off. If you do that, you can't get yourself caught. I don't want anybody getting it out of you that the rest of us survived."

Cole swallowed hard, and nodded. "Best chance for my family is me to stay dead. Isn't it?"

"Sorry, man." It sounded sincere, and the green eyes looked sad. 

He nodded again, and lay back on the mat that was the only object in the room other than some jugs of water. "Then I'll be here till we kick this thing in the ass. Team Winchester. Never thought I'd see that day."

Dean gave him a grin, and stood to lumber out of the room in exhaustion. 

"Where you heading?"

"I'll sleep right outside this door. Anything tries to get in this room, it's gonna have to go through me first. It'll give you time to get ready."

Cole watched him close the door behind him and smiled softly. "And I thought you were the monster," he whispered to the empty room.


	8. Dream

Rufus was still outside. Dean spoke with him briefly, told him he had corroborated his affiliation with Bobby Singer. Sam could hear them bantering a little. He smiled to himself tiredly. There was some posturing going on to determine who the alpha hunter was here. Dean was backing off a bit; they were at Rufus' cabin, after all, and Rufus hadn't been locked away for four years. But Dean was making it clear that he was more than capable of jumping back into the game. At the end of the short conversation, both men seemed satisfied with their roles.

"Hey," he whispered when Dean stepped silently back into the living area.

He heard a sigh in the dark. "You gotta sleep, Sammy."

He wanted to laugh. Dean had fallen right back into their old roles. They hadn't been free men for twelve hours yet. If that's what they were now. "Hard to sleep when your head's on a chopping block."

"Right." Dean stood above where Sam sat against the door beyond which slept the medic. "Sammy," he murmured in a desperate tone.

It wasn't necessary. Sam was up and diving into his arms already.

"Jesus, I missed you, little brother," he hissed into Sam's shoulder.

He gripped Dean hard. He could feel his hero smiling without looking at him. "Missed you, man," he choked out through thick emotion. "Missed you so much."

An observer might not have understood. They had seen one another almost daily across the block or in the yard, usually passing by, since their schedules were always deliberately staggered. And about once a week, they had managed to share a meal. But it was worse than Sam's time at school. That separation had been hard, but it was of their choosing. Well, it was of Sam's choosing. And each had always known the other was just a phone call away. But each seeing his brother subjected to the daily torments, monotony and indignities of the prison where no laws applied had been demoralizing, heartbreaking.

Just being able to hug Dean brought a stream of tears down his cheeks.

The older man sighed contentedly, and grasped the back of Sam's neck before letting go. "Lie down, Sammy. We can talk, but I need you rested."

He smiled. It made Dean feel better to be taking care of him again, so he did as he was told. "What are we thinking?" he murmured.

In what little moonlight they had, he could see Dean's face harden. "I don't know. It sounds like somebody was collecting monsters and hunters in a zoo. Some creepy menagerie."

"You think there were other hunters in there?"

"We can't know. None of us ever would have talked about it. Rufus said he knew who we were, and he still never spoke to us. Bobby's checking some of his contacts. Point is, the inmates were all human, far as we know."

"Dean, they were phasing out all the staff who had family. And I was thinking. Except Trenton, who I think has a wife, the only guards with family were on another shift. I don't think killing us all was Plan A. Something Benny said makes me think...You think they were experimenting? A bunch of humans nobody would miss, and one of every type of monster that can pass as human, all in a place where there are cameras, routines, food everybody eats in the same quantities...Kind of sounds like white rats to me."

"And there's very little fire don't kill. So if something went wrong, they gas and burn all the evidence, and hunt down anything that crawls out of the wreckage. Purge the whole laboratory."

Sam nodded grimly. "Start again someplace new."

Dean frowned. "It's the best theory we got. But what has the juice to do this?"

"Demons?"

"Why? Doesn't seem like they'd need to go to the trouble."

"I don't know."

Dean sighed. "Sleep, Sam. I'll keep watch. You're going to need to go out and palm yourself a laptop or something in the morning, not to mention some damn breakfast. Get some rest."

Sam was far beyond arguing. He laid himself down across the entrance to the bedroom, and closed his eyes.

"You're calling him Benny now, huh?"

A slow smile crept onto Sam's face. He didn't open his eyes, but he responded quietly. "Goodnight, Dean."

"'Night, Sammy."

***

Rufus nudged Dean with his foot a few hours later, before collapsing onto the couch and immediately commencing with his snoring. Dean sighed, but rose, and headed onto the porch. Sam could hear the sounds of weapons maintenance through the open window a moment later.

The younger hunter stood quietly and slipped into the room where the medic was resting.

His heart was pounding in his throat. He padded barefoot to the side of the bed and sat beside the large figure there. It was difficult to breathe suddenly.

A hand reached for him, and he startled, but remained silent. The hand gripped the back of Sam's neck in an entirely different way from how Dean had done it. Without a word, Sam was pulled down to a set of warm, hungry lips, and every nerve in his whole body flared to life. He lowered himself onto the figure, felt hard muscle and soft flesh greet him. His hands wriggled the man out of his clothing, and he did the same with his own. Now, when their skin connected, his body stung where he had not been touched for far too long. He breathed in sharply through his nose.

Benny's mouth was on his throat then, biting, sucking, until the blood bruised there. Sam's eyes rolled back, and then surrendered and closed entirely. His nipples and cock hardened painfully, and his muscles tightened in anticipation.

Then he could feel Benny's large paw on him, and he gasped in shock. Benny had clearly been expecting him, judging by the fact that a condom was being rolled onto him with urgency. He spared a moment to be grateful that Benny had obviously managed to grab essentials from his car before entering the cabin, and then all thoughts flitted away giddily as Benny turned below him to push himself up against Sam's ache. A moment of exploration and preparation left him breathless with want, and at last he could feel Benny taking hold of his thigh, pulling him. He aligned himself with trembling hands, and when he slowly pushed himself into the man, his mouth dropped open in disbelief.

His groan was entirely involuntary.

Sam's hand braced his weight on the wall, and he moved into the heat with abandon now. There was nothing in the world but this. Every inch of him was tight, coiled and screaming for release. His free hand reached beneath to find Benny's hard cock, under his writhing body. The noise the man made when he gripped him and began stroking was everything Sam had fantasized about on his loneliest nights. He had no idea which of them let go first, but it felt as though Sam had emptied his entire soul and every ounce of marrow into this gorgeous man. It took far longer to uncurl from around Benny than it should have, as if his body were insisting there was yet more to give. He shook violently for several minutes, and finally, he realized he had collapsed beside the medic on the bed which was not large enough for either of them alone.

Sam touched Benny's slick stomach gently, with trembling fingers.

"You all right?" he drawled quietly.

Sam smiled into the darkness. "There hasn't been a minute since you first patched me up that I didn't want that."

"There will never be a moment when I don't want that," Benny countered.

He sighed, but it came out as a sob. "Can I hold you?" he breathed. "I want to hold you."

Benny did not answer. He simply lay down on Sam's arm, and let the younger man curl into him.

"Please," Sam whispered. "Just let me pretend this is real. You can disappear like you do every night that I dream of you. But just for a little. Please let me pretend I'm not alone."

"I ain't leaving," came the soft reply. "You saved my life, Sam. And you've had my heart for months. I couldn't admit it before, even to me. But now something crazy is happening, and the only good part about it is this. You saved me. Now let me take care of you."

Sam fell asleep weeping into kisses and gentle fingertips. Maybe it was all a dream, everything that had happened. Maybe Dean was still waiting for one of them to give in and call Hilts. Maybe he would wake up in orange again, crawl out of his bunk in his cell, and be locked into leg irons again so he could go to get his cold, burnt coffee and the same tasteless breakfast he had eaten for years. Maybe it really was a dream. But until it was light, he was going to believe.

He was free. He was with his brother. He was lying beside the handsome medic who sounded like Gambit and tasted like pleasure.

It was a nice dream.


	9. Deprived of Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Each of the men are going on about three hours of poor sleep. Except Sam. Sam slept just fine.

Benny eyed Dean cautiously. The man had not taken his eyes off him since the medic had emerged from the cabin's only bedroom. He had attempted to be polite, though it was difficult to know what that would entail under these circumstances. But Dean simply crossed his arms and grunted at him. Benny had taken the hint, and now they were sharing awkward silence between them.

The cursing began anew with each man who awakened. First, there had been Rufus, who had loosed a stream of profanity unlike anything Benny had ever heard, and that included years in the military and among inmates. He had virtually ignored Benny, gave only a nod to Dean, and the only actual words the medic caught before the door slammed after the older man was something about bacon and coffee, which he took to mean Rufus would be returning with breakfast. He had.

Benny had cooked everything Rufus had brought back, and he did not bother to ask how it had been acquired. The older hunter had grunted in appreciation, and then headed out again without explanation.

Cole was the next to stumble into the light, and his cursing was under his breath. But at least he muttered a bit of a greeting. Benny gave a grim smile, and gestured toward their communal platter. Cole smiled back and headed immediately for the coffee.

It wasn't until the fifth companion came crashing out of the bedroom that Dean brightened fractionally. His voice was gruff and dry.

"Thought you were taking the day off," he snapped at his brother.

Benny raised his eyes to watch Sam's reaction.

"You should have woken me," Sam shot back in the same tone. "Thought I had a four o'clock shift."

"Let you sleep through that, but didn't think I had to pull your ass out of bed when the sun was up."

"Did you get eaten by a freaking pishtaco while I slept?" Sam growled. "Then what the hell are you complaining about? If you needed backup, I would have heard you bitching about it."

Benny watched curiously as a grin spread across Dean's face, and was mirrored, after a beat, on Sam's. He stared.

Dean burst into laughter. "Damn, it's good to be back on the job. Grab some breakfast. We got work to do."

Sam smirked at him. "Jackass."

Dean winked at him.

Benny and Cole glanced at one another, but chose silent diplomacy.

Sam threw a leg over a chair at the small table. "Rufus get a paper?" he asked, shoving three pieces of bacon into his mouth.

"Yeah. Came back this morning with a paper, coffee, bacon, eggs, ammo, whiskey and a second car."

Sam whistled. "Guy's a pro," he said with admiration.

Cole cleared his throat. "We, uh, we stealing all this crap, or what?"

Dean glanced at him. "Grand auto is the least of your problems, Trenton."

Benny watched Sam's lips close around a plastic fork of scrambled eggs, and smile. "Damn," he sighed. "This you, dude?"

"The Doc," Dean responded curtly.

Sam turned his smile, complete with dimples, on Benny. It was enough to make the older man's breath stop. "You made this? It's great."

"Just eggs," the medic drawled out, trying not to sound too pleased. "Ain't that hard." He could feel Cole's eyes flicking between them, and he looked away quickly.

"Just eggs," Sam laughed. He combed his fingers through his hair, and Benny's gaze was pulled back. "Says the guy who never ate prison eggs."

Dean cleared his throat. "You can get your hands on some tech, nerd?"

"I will," Sam promised, and he lowered his head, but peeked at Benny through his hair, even as he blushed into his coffee.

It was possibly the sweetest gesture Benny had ever seen. And this was the same man he had seen break another man's neck yesterday. What a strange feeling it was to want to snuggle and protect a man who was two hundred pounds of sheer muscle and deadly instincts!

He realized he was staring, and looked away, only to find himself locked into a suspicious glare with the elder brother of the man he had shared a too-small bed with the night before. Part of him wanted to lower his eyes. But his pride would not allow it. Instead, he raised an eyebrow and challenged the green glower.

Finally, Dean nodded, and Benny could breathe again. "You might've made a hunter in another life, Doc," Dean sighed as he stood from the table. "You don't scare easy; I'll give you that. Come on, Grasshopper," he barked at Cole. "I'll teach you to salt the perimeter and draw some devil's traps."

Cole smirked. "If I'm the Grasshopper, what's the old man?"

"Seemed an awful lot like a hornet to me. And he's gonna want us out of his nest soon," Dean was saying as the two of them tromped out of the cabin.

Benny had just time enough to wonder where Dean had gotten the jeans and boots he was wearing, before Sam was on him. He sucked in his breath in surprise. "Whoa!" he cried.

But Sam was a force of nature, and instead of a protest, the sound from Benny's throat was a growling moan. Benny had been standing in the tiny kitchen, which boasted a mini fridge, an ice box, and a stove, but little else. Then he was being pushed into a wall by frantic, shaking hands.

His voice was far lower and huskier than he had intended it to be. "Sam," he growled into the man's neck.

"I gotta touch you," he said through a biting kiss. "Wanted you so long. Ruined every damn fantasy I ever had, the second I saw you, heard that accent of yours..."

The litany of praise and urgency continued, but as nonsense streaming from behind desperate kisses.

How many men had died yesterday? And he and Sam were suddenly more alive than they had been in years. It was a tangled feeling in Benny's heart, to be falling so hard, so completely, amongst the ashes of so many lives.

But maybe that was exactly why this was so intense. Benny had seen a lot of death in his time. He found himself, again and again, wondering how a doctor such as he could waste his life in loneliness and thirst when he knew better than most how fleeting life could be. Now there was a chance at feeling something, at feeling everything, with this intriguing man, and he was done wasting his time. He was ready to feel something.

He was ready to feel this.

Benny's hand slid into Sam's soft hair, and gripped gently, just enough to pull him back. The hazel eyes were wild, and he could even see some fear there. That wouldn't do at all.

"I said I'd take care of you, and I meant it," he drawled quietly.

Sam's chest heaved, and he stared into Benny's eyes with a silent pleading. His hands stilled.

"You go in there and wait for me. I'm going to clean this up. Then I'm coming in to treat you the way you need to be treated. You had to fight for every decent thing that happened to you your whole life, Sam. I know that now. And I spent all last night figuring you out. So go rest, and in a few minutes, I'm coming in to take care of you like you deserve. Go on."

There came a voiceless, breathless whimper from Sam's throat, emitted from soft, trembling lips, and it was the most excruciating and most compelling note of music Benny had ever heard.

He leaned in to kiss another out of him, then gently pushed him toward the bedroom. "Go on," he murmured again, and he watched as Sam did as he was told.

***

Edgar looked at the file again. "I don't understand. Explain to me how you can be missing test subjects. Did some of them eat each other?"

The Leviathan who had stolen Victor's form four years ago shuddered involuntarily now, as he felt Edgar's irritation. "No, I-I wouldn't think so. There would have been some evidence left behind. None of those at that particular facility were types capable of swallowing whole. And...there's something else."

Edgar licked at his false, human teeth. His calm was as disturbing as his temper. "Of course there is."

Victor smiled weakly. "There's a vehicle missing."

"Of course there is."

"And the surveillance at the gate...It was disabled. Someone knew to look for it, and knew how to destroy it. We have no way of knowing which way they headed."

"Of course we don't." Edgar sighed. "But I suppose we do know who we are looking for."

"Not until we assess the DNA of all the expired subjects-"

"Winchesters," Edgar spat. "If anyone survived that purge, and knew to take out the cameras and trackers...If any of them weren't able to be coaxed into eating the food...We're looking for Winchesters."

Victor nodded quickly. "Yes, sir."

"Go. Continue the purge of the lab. I'll have Chet take care of the subjects you let escape. And if you would like to continue living, you will not allow for any further mistakes. I don't want Dick bothered with any of this."

Victor backed away. "No, I agree. No reason to worry Dick."


	10. Key

When Sam got back from lifting a laptop and a few burner phones, along with extra clothes, Bobby's truck was in the dirt beside the cabin. He grinned when he saw what else was there, and dove out of the car Rufus had stolen to look at it. 

Dean was already sitting in his Baby when Sam climbed in. 

"Hey. You got her back."

The man was clearly fighting back emotion. "My girl. She waited for me. I kind of thought..."

"You thought Bobby had gotten rid of her and just didn't tell you."

His brother's voice was hoarse. "Don't know what I would have done. Couldn't blame him for it, if he had."

"He said he'd take care of her, man. And Bobby knew better than anyone we weren't staying locked up forever."

"Yeah?" Dean looked at him then. "You never thought it? Even for a minute? That we might be there for life?"

"Not for a minute," he lied. 

Dean swiped at his eyes. "Yeah. Me neither." 

Sam smiled. He patted the dash. "Good to see you, old girl," he murmured, then he left Dean alone with the only possession he had in the world. He glanced back to see through the passenger window as Dean's shaking hand opened the glove compartment and pulled out several faded photographs. Sam sighed heavily, and turned to enter the house. 

It was then that it occurred to him that Bobby's truck had no trailer attached. 

"Bobby! Who'd you bring with you?"

He was immediately pulled into a bear hug by the man he had always thought of as Uncle. "Dammit, kid! I missed you boys!"

Sam settled happily into the embrace. It smelled like grease and salt and smoke and liquor, and it was just as much a homecoming as sitting in the Impala with Dean. 

Bobby backed up at last, and ran his eyes across his sleeve. Sam could see Benny and Cole smiling at one another, and Rufus rolling his eyes. Then there was yet another man. 

"Bobby?"

"Oh." The older hunter cleared his throat. "Sam, this is my new intern. Kevin Tran."

The kid behind him smirked. "Intern," he snickered. 

"Intern?"

Bobby shrugged. "Gotta call the kid something. He don't like idjit."

"I respond well to Kevin."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Who are you, Kevin? You're no hunter."

Bobby snorted. "He'll surprise you. Just you wait till you and your brother see what this kid's found."

Sam addressed the young man. Could he be more than nineteen? Twenty? "What'd you find?"

Kevin held his gaze steady. Despite his size and apparent age, this man was confident enough to look Sam in the eyes and smirk. 

Sam liked that. 

"What did I find?" The grin broadened, and he held up a strange, old-fashioned key, on which Sam could see a strange sigil. "I found the Bat Cave."


	11. Night Moves

It was so good to be driving again. Dean didn't care where they were headed. He had his Baby, he had his brother, and they were back in black. And plaid, because that's what Bobby brought them. Dean even felt better wearing his old boots and green utility coat. It wasn't John's leather, which had been sliced apart by claws years back. But it was the best he had, and it was comfortable. 

He was glad he had gotten time alone in the Impala. The moment he had pulled out the photographs that Bobby either hadn't found or had known they were too sacred to touch, he had let the tears come. Now that they were out of his system, and the photos were hidden away again, he felt incredible. 

"Woo!" he shrieked into the wind. "Listen to her purr!"

Sam turned to grin at him. "You know, if you two would like some time alone, all you gotta do is ask."

"Don't listen to him, Baby. He doesn't understand us."

Sam's laugh was what really put his happiness over the edge. So they were back to being fugitives, and some unknown monster zookeeper was after them. Didn't matter. Everything was right with the world if Sam was laughing. 

"Speaking of time alone, you really bang the doc last night?" Dean was fiddling with his music. 

"Are you kidding? A little less beard, and you would have hit that too."

Dean shrugged. "Good looking guy. Still might."

"Screw you."

He smirked. 

Sam heaved a long-suffering sigh as the music began. "Well, don't...Night Moves me!"

"Shh. Just let it wash over you."

"Let-" Sam threw his hands up and lay back. 

"Just take it in." He snickered. "Is that-Is that what he said?"

"Not telling you who topped, Dean."

"Was a little too tall. Could've used a few pounds."

"This is ridiculous."

Dean continued to belt out the lyrics. He knew he was off-key, but he also knew Sam would never be able to tell. Winchester men had never been destined for lives as lounge lizards. He could remember his father muttering the words to Zeppelin so horribly it made Mary roll her eyes, but little Dean had adored him for it. Then the rest of his childhood had been spent in the Impala, listening to the man try to hit notes with all the best frontmen from the hairiest bands of the eighties. Those were the good days, when John sang off-key. Dean had lived for those days. "One of the greatest rock writers of all time, Samuel," he laughed in his best impression of John lecturing about classic music. 

His brother smirked. "Yeah. It's Sam," he corrected, but there was no heat to his voice, and a moment later, he was performing his own version of the song. "Out in the back seat of my brother's '67 Chevy!"

"Whoa!" Dean cackled. "You are not bringing that dude in here!"

"Yeah? You started this. You started this!"

Dean thought perhaps he had never been happier. "Here we go. Come on now!" 

They made a horrible duet, but it sounded great to Dean. They passed the road food between them while they sang, which only made it that much worse, and that much more wonderfully nostalgic. 

At last, he turned the music down and grinned sidelong at his brother. "So? Guarding the door? That what the kids are calling it these days?"

Sam sighed as he melted back against his seat. "Man, I needed that."

"Uh huh. I bet. Just so we're clear, when we find this place Bobby's taking us to, you and Doc don't wait up. I'm Dean Winchester, and my kid brother got laid the minute he got out of freaking Purgatory, but I haven't. The Dude will not abide."

"Twice."

"What?"

"Your kid brother got laid twice. And that's only quantifying by separation of time. Doesn't even count-"

"Baby and I will leave you on the side of the road. Don't think we won't."

"Just saying. Cole's pretty hot. If you weren't so picky about anatomy..."

"Don't go there! Don't!"

Sam laughed, and stretched his legs as well as he could. "Think I got taller since I was in here last."

"Shut up. You did not."

"Pretty sure."

"I missed you," Dean blurted abruptly. 

The younger man just smiled. "Think he's talking to you, Baby," he said quietly. "We missed him too, huh, girl?" He said the last part to the window.

Dean smiled to himself, and turned up the music. They only had a two hour drive to this secret clubhouse of Kevin's. He wanted to enjoy every mile.


	12. Cheers.

It took a lot to make Sam Winchester's jaw drop. He was getting to the point that he thought he had seen everything, or at least read about it. But this was a world where the supernatural was natural and the ordinary was extraordinary, so he should know better than to ever feel he had seen it all.

"Holy crap."

Kevin grinned at him. "Right?"

"It's a bunker," Dean muttered.

Bobby smacked him in the back of the head. "Of course it's a bunker, ya idgit. It's what's inside that's the real impressive part!"

Dean made his way to the doorway Sam was already staring into. He shoved his way in, then stopped, just as the younger man had. "Holy crap."

"Already went there," Sam breathed.

"Worth saying twice," Dean mumbled.

Kevin's grin was out of control. "Told you I found the Bat Cave."

After nearly an hour spent in exploration, Sam had lost track of the rest of the crowd. The last time he had seen any of them Dean was gushing over the cars in the garage, with Bobby, Kevin and Cole. Kevin was giving the blue book value of everything, including the Impala, though he steered away from Baby when Dean indicated that she was worth far more than her dollar value. Rufus had disappeared, as Sam was beginning to understand was his habit. Too many years hunting alone made it difficult to be around others for too long, and Rufus may not have been on the cell block long, but any time at all was enough to make someone miss his freedom to come and go.

His fingertips brushed along the ancient books, browsed the old files, and slid across the stone tablets on the table reverently. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing in the clean air and smell of old paper, when a hand slipped around his waist.

Sam had to fight against the instinct to strike the man. He tried to assure his reflexes that there was no need to be on high alert. This hand was welcome. More than welcome.

"Thought I lost you," Benny drawled into his ear. "Place is a maze. But I knew if I stayed around the library, you'd turn up."

Sam smiled and opened his eyes again. "And how did you know that?"

"Because I been stalking you. Did you know I can get access to all the books you took out of the library?"

He snorted. "That won't tell you much. I read everything in that place at least once."

"And that told me plenty. Surprised you never ordered anything from outside."

Sam's eyes were burning. He took a shuddered breath, and sighed it out. "I never...I've been without a lot of things in my life, Doc. But I always had books. Every town we went to, every school, there were always libraries. And when we were on the road, I could always buy something to carry around. When they told me I couldn't order anything new, that I wasn't on the approved list...I think that's the first time I just wanted to curl up in solitary and die. I could have found new ones here and there. But the idea that I'd be waiting, week in and week out to maybe see a new book...If it weren't for my brother, I think I just would have let it kill me."

When he looked down, there were pools of tears in the large man's eyes. "Ain't right, Sam. What they did to you two."

He licked his lips, and tasted salt. "Yeah," he whispered. "Ain't right what they did to any of us. Cole's got a kid, did you know? Kids shouldn't have to lose their parents. Somewhere, there's a kid thinking his daddy is dead. That ain't right."

Benny nodded. "Sam? I hate to...I'm real tired."

He blinked. "Yeah. You would be. I'm sorry. Look. I'm going to stake a claim on one of these bedrooms back here for you."

"For us?" Benny pressed gently.

He smiled again at last. "Yeah. If you still want. I'd like that. I'll let Bobby know. This is kind of his headquarters now, so I guess he's king of this hill."

Sam sought out the older man, and found him and Rufus elbow deep in a case of very old liquor bottles.

He laughed. "Careful what you open around here," he advised. "Half of it's probably haunted."

"Haunted liquor," Rufus scoffed.

But Bobby raised an eyebrow. "Anybody sees a label in Japanese, they just bring it to me first."

"Show off," Rufus grumbled. But his tone was happy enough as he poured himself a drink. "The doc find you?"

Sam nodded. He noticed Bobby watching him. "Yeah. Bobby, any reason we can't nest in one of those bedroom that aren't being used?"

"No reason at all. The place is warded five ways to Sunday. You're safe as you're gonna be."

"Thanks. That Kevin kid. He's something." A flush of heat filled his face, and he looked away, pretending to be busy looking over a bottle. "Probably a better student than I ever was. Huh?"

Bobby's voice was kind. "He's real smart, Sam. You'll like him. One of the family, without a doubt. But you boys...You and your brother will always be my boys. Ain't no better hunters out there than my boys, and that's a fact. Kevin is what we call a Man of Letters. You'll meet the other tomorrow. And there's someone else I'm hoping got my coordinates. Once we're all here, we'll hash out what's going on. Till then?" He raised his glass with a smile. "Kanpai."

Rufus rolled his eyes and drank.

Benny was leaning on the library table when he returned. "Hey. You check us into Hotel California?"

"Guess so." Sam carried two bags of clothing and his weapons to the bedroom down the hall. When Benny was in, he turned to him and smiled. "This okay?"

"Smallish."

He looked around them, and laughed quietly. "Maybe. But you're forgetting where I spent the last four years. This is like the honeymoon suite. Not...that I've ever been in a place that had one of those. Except a few old haunted hotels."

Benny hummed in amusement. "Andy had quite a bit of money. And he liked spending it on things like that. He was...Spoiled ain't even the word for it."

Sam lowered them both to the bed. His blush from earlier was back. "So you...This is slumming for you." He tried to laugh again, but he was aware how pathetic he sounded. "Escaped convict. Living underground, literally. Not exactly what life with Andy was, huh?"

Benny reached up and touched Sam's hair with a softness one wouldn't expect from a man like him. Sam tried not to press into the touch, tried not to close his eyes as if he could keep himself in this dream a little longer that way, tried not to let his heart race.

 _He'll be gone as soon as it's safe,_ he reminded himself harshly, mercilessly. _Fall in love if you want. But as soon as it's safe for him to go, you'll be in love alone. Again. Always._

"I had some good times with Andy," Benny confessed in his quiet drawl. "But as soon as we had some bad times, that was the end. You...Everything we've had has been a hurricane. And we're just getting started. I'm curious to see what happens when the waters go back down."

Sam's laugh was bitter now. "They don't, Doc. That's my life, one storm after another."

He nodded, and kissed his lips. "Then we'll ride it out together, you and I. I've weathered some myself, you know." When Sam began shaking his head, Benny took his face between warm calloused hands. "And I want you to call me Benny."

Hazel eyes full of fear and pooling with pain looked up at him. "Don't. Please don't. I'm trying not to fall in love with you. Because I can keep you safe till you leave, but then...then I gotta keep fighting with a broken heart, and I'm just too tired. My brother needs me. I can't let you break me. Hunters...We can't be distracted by things like...like loneliness and..." He gasped in a sob. "And I owe my brother a whole partner. Distractions get you killed; they get your partner killed. You break my heart, and I can't be what he needs, I'll never forgive myself."

The medic nodded slowly. "Okay. Okay, I understand. So let's do this instead. Let's go ahead and fall in love. And let's skip the part where somebody's heart gets broken. You and your brother do what you do, and I'll be waiting to patch you up after."

Sam stared at him.

Benny pushed him gently onto his back. "I've seen your scars, Sam. I know how dangerous your work is. But I also get how important it is. So let me help. I don't know how good I'd be at staking vampires, but I've been trained for combat aid. You think because I'm a doctor that I'm fragile? Kid, I've seen more monsters than most. And that doesn't even include you and your brother."

A slow smile came over Sam then. His heart was pounding in his chest. "We're the good guys."

"Good guys wear white, Sam. Not orange."

"And you don't stake vamps. You cut their freaking heads off."

Benny shrugged. "Try not to bring your work home with you."

At last, Sam grinned, and he pushed himself up to reach Benny's lips. "Might still call you Doc, though," he warned.

"And what should I call you?"

"Anything at all," he breathed happily.


	13. Silver Rose

The medic opened his eyes to find his lover standing in front of a dimly lit mirror and sink in the tiny attached bathroom. He watched him with sleepy eyes in silence. 

Sam was staring into his own gaze. It was like before, when he didn't seem to recognize himself. 

"You all right?"

The hunter slid his eyes to look at him. "Are you?"

Benny shrugged. "I'm alive. Can't complain about the company. Little hungry." A little thirsty too, but he didn't say that. 

"I want you."

"Then why you all the way in there?"

Sam gripped the sink with strong hands. "I'm trying not to..."

Benny sat up and stared at him. "Not to what? Not to want me? I worked damn hard at making you want me."

A tiny smile escaped, but was gone in an instant. "That isn't what I meant."

"Then what'd you mean?"

The dark eyes closed, and Sam sighed through a locked jaw. "God, your voice."

Benny smirked. "You got a Gambit kink, and I don't mind."

The large, powerful body turned toward him, and he licked his lips as Sam moved forward. The movement was slow, like a cat stalking prey. 

Benny had plenty of time to feel his heart begin to pound. This lover was a sort of dangerous he had never wanted before, but which made him tremble now. 

"It's not just the accent," Sam hissed. He climbed onto the bed on all fours. In spite of his weight, the bed barely moved, so slowly did he approach. 

Like a cat, Benny kept thinking wildly. If he had remained asleep, he might not have felt Sam's stealth at all. He might have awoken to the heat of the man's breath on his bare throat, which sent his muscles tightening and his flesh begging, in a wave from his stomach to his groin. The hot, stinging exhale through clenched teeth sent him arching up toward that gorgeous mouth. But Sam denied him the bite.

"I'm trying not to hurt you," he growled finally, continuing his earlier statement. 

It was possibly the sexiest thing Benny had ever heard. He grinned. "I ain't afraid of you," he challenged in spite of his trembling. 

The hazel had darkened so completely that Benny shivered when they looked up at him. Sam still hadn't touched him yet, but he had seen how hard he was just standing there, and his own anatomy had caught on and caught up quickly. 

"I don't want you to be afraid," Sam murmured, contradicting every instinct Benny had. "I want you to be sated. I want to wring you clean. I want you to forget any other lover you've ever had. I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want you to be afraid. But I want to make you mine. I can't stand it."

Benny watched him with heat racing through him. He had never been with anyone who made his every nerve scream for touch. He had never been with anyone who was so desperate for him. It was intoxicating in a way alcohol had never been, and at least as addictive. 

"I have nothing in this world but a silver rosary covered in dried blood. I have nothing to offer you. I'm broken in ways you can't even begin to patch up. I'm a fugitive. I'm a hunter, a damn good one. That's all I am. I don't know how to be a lover. But tell me how, and I'll learn. Tell me what you need, and I'll be that. I've paced this room for hours, and I can't stop listening for your heartbeat. I've tried to fight it down, and I can't. You were everything, every fantasy, every dream...Benny, you were every time I touched myself back in that place, and you were all I wanted as I fell asleep."

The voice and words, the intensity of the stare which ate him up, it was enough to pull a whimper from a strong man. 

The sound made Sam's eyes roll back and close, and at last, he sucked in his breath and lowered his naked body onto Benny's.

The fulfilled craving of touch, of the weight of muscle and the chill of skin atop hot arousal, pressed a moan through Benny and into Sam's neck. He wrapped himself around the man, held him as he shuddered. His feet pushed into the mattress to slot them together, so that each of them groaned. Then Sam was reaching between them, stroking them both with a light, large hand. His eyes remained closed. His other hand held his full weight off Benny; his chin dropped so that his forehead rested on Benny's chest. 

"Sam," he groaned.

"Love your voice," Sam growled out. "Every fucking pitiful orgasm in a cold shower, every sorry chance to strip some relief out in a bunk, all that ever worked was you saying my name. Thinking of you with your breath on me, with that beautiful voice, saying my name, just like that...wanting-uh-wanting your hand, not mine, wanting...to feel you everywhere, taste you everywhere..."

Benny moaned low in his throat, as the man began using his own slick to prepare him. It was clumsy and urgent, but that somehow made it even better. "Sam," he whined, as the man paused to fumble with a condom he grabbed from the table, next to the empty wrapper from hours ago. "Sam, come on. Please."

The eyes flew open, head snapping up, and for just an instant, Benny was afraid, because the man radiated power, and it was clearly Benny that he wanted. "Let me in you," he snarled. 

It was a strange mixture of demanding and desperate pleading. Benny smiled shakily. "Sam, please," he said again breathlessly. 

Sam's eyes lit like fire. 

It was the please. Used in combination with the hunter's name, Benny learned in that moment that there was nothing in the world he couldn't have from this man. He tucked that information away with a degree of smugness and amusement. 

Then he lost all words entirely as Sam slid into him. One of them let loose a loud moan of pleasure, and Benny suspected it might have been him, since Sam's mouth was on his throat. His huge hand was between them, stroking him, while Benny's own hands grabbed hold of Sam's slender hips. Then Sam was up on his knees, pulling his large lover as if he weighed nothing, lifting one of Benny's legs up and over so that he was thrusting into him from behind while Benny lay on his side, gripping the sheets in his fists for support. The hand returned to slide over his arousal, to pull him toward the edge. The way they were angled allowed him to feel just how large Sam was, how filled he was, how close he was. 

His own pleasure was tipping over, but even so, he managed a mischievous smile back at the man. "Please, Sam," he drawled out in the thickest accent he ever used. 

Sam's mouth dropped wide, and his eyes closed tight. He shuddered hard.

The force Sam expended to slam into him one last time released Benny's own orgasm. He tried valiantly to keep his eyes open, to watch Sam's face throughout, but it became more like a gorgeous stop-action film playing for his entertainment. 

Neither of them moved or spoke for an unknowable length of time. Then, finally, Benny pushed back on Sam's chest gently. 

The motion seemed to startle him. "I'm sorry," he panted. 

Benny laughed at him in his quiet voice. "Never be sorry, darling. Don't you never be sorry."

Sam hummed, nearly purred, as he leaned in to kiss him. "Your accent is delicious." 

"Hasn't been this thick since high school," he chuckled. 

"Must be the stress," Sam murmured through his kisses. 

"Must be," he teased back. 

Sam lifted himself, and returned a moment later with washcloths and more kisses. "You all right?" His eyes were low as he cleaned Benny's skin with admirable tenderness. 

"Are you?" He lifted an eyebrow. 

Sam smiled. "I'm alive," he said softly. "And I can't complain about the company."

Benny snorted at him and threw an arm across his eyes. "You better not!" He burst into laughter then. "You got the sweetest, most eloquent dirty talk I ever heard, boy."

He could feel Sam flushing again when he finished his chore and snuggled in beside him. "What?"

"Here we are actually screwing, but you're talking like you're still back on the block wishing for it."

"You don't know how much I wanted you. Especially when you spoke to me when you weren't supposed to."

The smile faded then, and he tightened his grip on Sam. "You mean when I treated you like a human when I was told not to?"

Sam sighed. "It's amazing how little things like that can be so humiliating. I'd rather sit in solitary for days than listen to a guard tell you or one of the other staff-"

"We don't talk to this one," Benny said for him. 

His lover was blinking back tears when he looked up again. "Yeah," he sighed. "Like me and Dean...Like we were rabid animals, like we'd snap and bite if anyone got too close. Like just talking to us was dangerous."

"Was it?"

Sam laughed then, and the tears spilled over onto his cheeks. "Of course it was. We're trained to use any information we can get out of you. We know how to read every movement, every expression, and we know how to find every weakness through a simple conversation. Talking to us is as good as handing us a key out the front door."

"How long were you there before you could have gotten out?"

He stared into the dim light at nothing. "We always could have gotten out," he responded. "We haven't found a place yet that can hold us. Not if we're together and desperate enough to kill to get out. But we weren't willing to kill a guy like Cole to get free. So instead, we let them treat us like rabid coyotes. Because it was better than hurting them."

"We don't talk to this one," Benny sighed again sadly. 

"I think they noticed when I got good enough at Spanish to talk to my cellmate. It seemed like they moved him as soon as I got enough confidence to really talk to him. It was abrupt. I didn't see him again. Makes me wonder what happened to him. Not a good guy. Probably deserved to be monster food, don't get me wrong. But I hate to think that's what happened to him, just because I was trying to learn to talk to him."

Benny frowned up at him. "Sam? You think...you think they were experimenting with you before the food and fire? You think they were watching what got to you? Isolation? Seeing what it did to you and your brother?"

Sam was quiet for a moment. Then he shrugged. "I don't know. We blamed the arresting agent for so long...It's hard to think maybe Henricksen really had nothing to do with how we were treated different from everybody else."

"I don't know what a man as smart as you did to get through four years of that."

"Hacked into my alma mater. Picked fights with assholes. Baited the medic into talking to me. I once wrote a dissertation on the financial inefficiency of prisons, all in my head. It was probably about eighty pages long, but I can't know for sure. There were footnotes."

Benny shook his head. "You're something, Sam Winchester."

He snorted softly. "Something. Something awkward and broken and lonely. Benny, how could you want any part of this?"

"I want every part of you, darling."

The little shiver of pleasure that rippled through Sam was it. That was the end for Benny. He loved this man. There was no turning back now. He belonged to Sam. 

"You want me to be yours, you said? Here I am. Where's the rosary?"

Sam shifted to stare at him. Then he reached for the table, and pulled a chain from it. 

Benny took it and wrapped it around his wrist. "Now you've got two things in this world, Sam, darling. All yours."

The man's tears washed over both their faces as Sam covered him in kisses.


	14. Five and Seven

Dean had never hunted with Bobby, except for when their prey was deer, and the man had huffed at him for not being able to shoot at something that wasn't attacking anyone. But the fact that he was even still alive was a testament to the fact that he was sharp. And while Sam and the doc had slipped off and Kevin had curled up with a dusty book until he passed out on a couch, Dean and Cole had sat around the table drinking with the two patriarchs and hearing stories of hunting monsters Dean had never even heard of. It was an education, to say the least, full of laughter and banter, and finger pointing. Dean translated a bit for Cole, but the guy caught on to the vernacular quickly, and Dean was impressed with the way he seemed to be absorbing and storing away every little piece of information.

"And did you stab it seven times with a bamboo knife blessed by a Shinto priest?"

Rufus stabbed his finger toward Bobby while holding tight to his glass. "It's five times!"

"Well, clearly it's seven times, because there was a giant hole in my salvage yard where we buried her!"

"Shoulda burned her," Dean muttered.

Bobby turned to him with that look that said he was only just sharper than a box of hammers. "You ever burned an okami, boy? Try to get that smell out! Burn her. Idgit."

Dean snickered and threw back his drink.

"So did you catch up with her?" Cole wanted to know.

"She caught up with Bobby," Rufus responded. "Not that that's hard. Guy's slow!"

"I ain't slow! I'm careful!"

"But you didn't just happen to have a bamboo knife blessed by a Shinto priest, I'm guessing," Cole nudged.

"Of course I do. But it was in a bag I only use on trips to Asia. Nobody sees okamis in North America! Bag was in a locked storage unit."

Rufus turned back to Cole. "Okami went after his neighbor, and he convinced it to climb into a wood chipper. Pretty much trumps everything."

Cole cringed. "I'll remember that." He glanced at Dean. "They should teach these things in special ops training."

"They should teach these things in high school," Dean argued. He drained the rest of his glass. "All right, gentlemen. I could sit and listen to old war stories all night, but I better catch some sleep. Been fed and lazy the past few years. I ain't used to all this running."

Bobby snorted at him. "Practically soft," he teased.

They both knew there was no chance of Dean allowing himself to become complacent, nor soft. He winked at his old friend and slipped out silently. He could hear Rufus lecturing Cole about the annoying level of specificity involved in hunting.

"I still say it was five times!"

"I will look it up right now!"

Dean smiled to himself. He felt sorry for Cole, who was not going to be able to sleep much while worrying about his family. But as for Dean? It was great to be back in the game.


	15. Plans

"Leviathan."

Sam blinked a few times. "Okay. Like...whales?"

Kevin shook his head. "No. The bible never really said what leviathans are. We kind of assume they're sea monsters of some kind. But I found a book written by a Dr. Visyak who was apparently tracked down by some Men of Letters-"

"They're the, uh, the nerds that set up this clubhouse," Dean muttered.

"Yes. So they found Dr. Visyak, and they claim she's a Purgatory native."

"A what who?"

Sam rolled his eyes at his brother. "She's from Purgatory. Keep up."

"How can something be from Purgatory?" Cole asked quietly. "I thought that was...Isn't that where you go if you're not damned but you're not saved either?"

Bobby cleared his throat. "Let the boy talk."

Kevin smiled at his mentor's support. Sam frowned a little, but focused on listening. "So the Men of Letters invited in their first female consultant. Dr. Visyak was an expert on all sorts of things. Dragons. Alphas. And leviathan."

Dean turned to Bobby. "Where's the part where we care?"

Sam clapped him in the back of the head. "Shut up. Be a professional."

Rufus snorted and reached for a glass.

Kevin licked his lips. He was beginning to look irritated. "The part where you care, Dean," he scolded, "is the part where I tell you I think the monsters who kept you locked in a terrarium for four years and experimented on you and your brother are leviathans."

There was a thud upstairs, and Sam and Dean had their weapons out and trained on the figure before it could even breathe.

"Huh. A little jumpy, boys?"

Sam watched the redhead bounce down the stairs as though she owned the place. He and Dean did not remove their weapons but they each flicked their gaze toward Bobby.

"At ease, dumbasses. I told you we were expecting company." Bobby stood to receive a hug from the tiny firecracker. "Heya, Charlie. Any trouble?"

"Not a bit. Kevin, you owe me lunch." She held out a thumb drive with an air of triumph.

Kevin laughed and snatched it from her. "No way! I thought you'd be eaten for sure!"

"Sorry, sweetheart," Bobby said regretfully. "You know the rules."

She shrugged. "No problem, Obi Wan." She headed for the small table and picked up what appeared to be a bottle of lotion to squirt some on her hands. Then she held them up for inspection. "See, Dumbledore! No burnies. Mm. Smells like vanilla this time."

Kevin looked up from his laptop. "Yeah, I experimented a little. Holy water, borax, moisturizer and vanilla extract. It's not bad, huh?"

Dean put his hand on his hip. His gun had been safetied, but he was not yet willing to holster. "What the hell kind of Alice in Wonderland dream did I wake up in?"

Benny snickered and whispered in Sam's ear. "I'm thinking you can put the gun down for now. Unless adorable is dangerous."

Sam smiled sheepishly and placed his pistol in its place beneath his shirt. "It could be. Remind me to tell you about the time we found a baby skinwalker. In a bear cub form. It was nearly as cute as whatever that thing is right there."

Benny chuckled. "I think it's a girl, Sam."

"If Bobby says so."

"Did you check in with Frank?" Bobby asked gruffly.

"Yes, sir! He's as cranky and alive as he ever is."

"And...did you hear anything..."

She smiled wide now. "Have I ever let you down, Gandalf?" She pointed up the stairs, where they could hear someone else joining them.

A sigh crossed Bobby's lips. "Rufus? Your partner made it."

Sam watched the parade of emotions cross the old man's eyes. When the relief and gratitude had passed, he scowled instead. "Oh, good. Not even death gets that boy out of my hair. Tainted food, gas, fire-What else can we try?"

"Don't hate," the voice called out. Then a gangly hunter in a ball cap just like Bobby's appeared to strut down the stairs.

Sam's eyes widened. "Garth? Dentist Garth? The one whose ass Gordon Walker nearly kicked?"

Dean stared. "You made a smear out of Walker for this guy?"

Benny laughed quietly. "Glad to see you made it out, kid."

Garth shrugged. "I was already out. They just didn't know it yet. When the place went up in flames, I called Bobby to see if he'd heard if Rufus made it out."

The old man sighed as Garth threw his arms around him. "Yeah, yeah. Get off me."

"So glad to see you, man!"

Kevin waved absently as he concentrated on his computer.

Sam felt as though he were in some alternate universe. "Bobby, who the hell are all these people?"

Bobby sighed. "Everybody sit. Now."

Even Rufus did as he was told. They sat around the long table, and it was odd how it seemed as though there was the perfect amount of space for those gathered there. Sam looked at each in turn.

There was Dean, suspicious and on edge, sitting at his left. Dean was nearly always to his left.

Beside him was Cole, who looked exhausted but kept alert eyes flicking around the room.

Kevin sat with his computer, between Cole and Charlie. Sam still didn't know what to think of these two, but they clearly were smart and knowledgeable, and they had Bobby's trust.

Bobby sat at the head of the table like the patriarch he was. Garth flanked him, and stared at the older hunter with adoration and devotion plain on his face. On the other side of Garth sat Rufus, who looked equal parts annoyed and thankful to have Garth back.

Lastly, there was Benny, to Sam's right, who spoke little and heard everything.

Bobby sighed heavily. "Things have changed in the past few years, boys. Kevin and Charlie, the next generation of hunters."

Garth snorted. "Yeah. The virtual kind."

Rufus smirked.

But Bobby stared them both down. "These two do a lot of the tracking and research, and they're damn good at it. M. I. T. and Princeton, Sam," he said, pointing at Charlie, then Kevin. "They're bright and dedicated. They managed to track down the last living member of the Men of Letters and gave us access to a treasure house of information on the supernatural. These kids work tirelessly, and they get the job done. They track the monsters and research what to do with them, and I dispatch a team like Rufus and Garth to go take care of them. It's as good a system as we ever had."

Dean glanced at Sam, who smiled shakily. "Really?" He gave a soft laugh. "Almost sounds like we're obsolete, big brother." He shrugged, and tried again to laugh. "Maybe not you. But hard to believe you'd still even need me."

The comforting weight of Benny's hand on his leg warmed him a little, and gave him the strength to look up at Bobby.

The older man smiled at him. "Everybody got a role to play here, boy. Don't forget that."

"Yes, sir."

Dean sighed. "I still don't get what it is we're doing. You say there are sea monsters from Purgatory. So what do we do about them?"

"They're fierce, dude," Kevin warned. "God made them to be mostly invincible. He created this race after them, the angels."

Sam frowned. "What are those?"

"Ain't nothing anymore," Bobby responded. "According to Visyak, the leviathans destroyed them all. Like the piranha that ate the whole fish tank. So God created the Alphas, who all together, along with God Himself, managed to trap the leviathans in Purgatory."

"Awesome. So what are they doing here?"

Kevin shook his head. "Nothing good. A demon named Crowley opened a portal to the place, in order to access the wealth of monster souls that are sent there when they die."

"Monsters have souls now?"

"Awesome," Dean muttered.

"Crowley and his henchmen let the leviathans into the world. The demons have been battling them, but so far, they've only been successful at throwing some of them back into Purgatory, and at great cost to their numbers."

Dean sat back against his chair. "Can't say I'm sad about that."

"Not that losing demons isn't kind of nice. But in the meantime, the leviathan leader is still doing just fine. That's where we come in."

Charlie nodded. "I just hacked into Roman's private network. I've got his travel plans for the next two weeks. Where he'll be at every hour of the day and night. And not surprisingly, it's pretty far from that prison."

Kevin watched her. "They're afraid to let him find out what happened there."

She put her hands up. "That's what I'm guessing too. They'll try to clean it up before he finds out they screwed up bad enough to have to press the reset on their experiment."

"What were they experimenting with?"

Bobby groaned. "Us. It's what's for dinner. I sent Garth and Rufus in because we were getting signs that the prison you two were in might have activity. They were seeing how useful allying with certain monsters could be, and trying out new chemicals to be sure they can sedate and control us as needed. Couldn't get word to you boys. Couldn't even be sure that's where you were being held, till Garth was able to get a message to Charlie letting her hack the prison records. By the time we had finally decided on a breakout for you boys, it was too late. They had already played out their experiment and had begun the purge." Bobby smiled then. "But leave it to my boys to find their own way out. I'm so proud of you."

It meant the world to Sam, and he knew Dean felt the same way.

Bobby's voice became gruff, and the moment was over. "Besides, we need you two to implement the strike we're sending Dick Roman's way. We've done all the leg work. We found the weapon-"

"The really bad guys always need a special sword," Charlie grumbled.

Kevin shrugged. "I got it, didn't I? Kevin Solo, Charlie. Kevin freaking Solo."

Dean shook his head at them. "Just give me something to stab and something to stab it with. I'm so done with playing house. Send me to kill something, Singer."

Bobby smirked at him. "And that's why you're one of the field hunters," he laughed. "You and Sam leave first thing in the morning. Garth and Rufus will leave tonight, and scout out the target. Their job is to give you boys a clear path to Dick Roman, the leader. You two take him out, and the rest is just cleaning up the mess."

"He's their Alpha?" Sam asked quietly.

"Essentially," Kevin responded. "Cutting the head off the snake. Bobby says you two are the best. And if you die, Garth, Rufus and Bobby are going in. So try not to die. I don't know you two, but I like them."

Charlie giggled.

"You got a job for one more?"

Everyone turned to look at Cole.

Bobby met Dean's eyes for a moment, and something seemed to pass between them. Then he nodded. "You think you can handle it, it wouldn't hurt to have a trained guy. See, we don't know exactly what happens when we shove the pointy end into the leviathan. But we're pretty sure there's going to be some chaos. And I'm willing to bet there will be some humans around who need a hand escaping. That's what these boys and me will be doing. Rufus and Garth are going to scout. Then you and me can follow them, and when my boys take their shot on Dick, you can help me get any nearby humans to safety. You up for that?"

"Where's the medic meant to be?" Benny asked.

Bobby grinned at him. "I was hoping you'd ask that. Boys, you chose some good folks to save, didn't you? Doc, you'll be waiting in the van with Kevin and Charlie, ready to patch up anybody that comes out bleeding."

"I can do that," he promised. "You've got supplies?"

"Yeah. We got supplies. Everybody get ready any way you need to. Garth, Rufus, you leave at nineteen hundred."

"Plenty of time for a nap," Rufus announced as he stood away from the table. He clapped Garth on the back, and the thin man stumbled a bit as he tried to stand too. "You're driving, kid." With that, he grabbed the last of the whiskey and wandered out of the room. Garth winked at Charlie and headed after him.

Bobby turned to Kevin. "You and your girl Friday better catch some sleep too. I want you two and the doc following the Chevy by oh seven hundred."

"Aye, aye, Captain!" Charlie chirped.

Bobby stood and nodded at Cole. "You're with me, boy. We've got work to do."

Cole practically leapt from his seat. "Yes, sir!"

Before they knew it, Sam, Dean and Benny were alone in the library. They each heaved a sigh.

Dean chuckled wearily. "You get any of that?"

Sam shrugged. "They're going to give us a special sword and aim us at somebody to kill with it, and that's somehow going to make everything better."

Dean stood to stretch and nodded. "Works for me. Kind of nice letting Bobby make all the calls. I could get used to this. Just hand me the weapon and tell me what to kill with it. Half of the job suddenly done for you."

Sam nodded. "Still feels a little like becoming obsolete," he muttered.

"Nah. Don't worry, Sammy. They can't replace you with a handful of nerds. You know there's more to hunting than swinging a machete, and you know there's more to it than researching lore. These kids may be able to do some of the legwork for us. And I can swing the machete. But there will never be a hunt where I don't need your brain, your instincts and your reflexes at my side. And most importantly? You're a stubborn son of a bitch, and you don't die easy, and you refuse to let me die. So they can hack all they want, research what they need, collect components for special weapons. Still nobody Bobby would trust to see it through like me and you."

It was amazing how Dean could make him feel so much better after just a small, barely coherent speech like that. Sam laughed. "Well, I guess this is us auditioning for our old roles, huh? How rusty are we?"

Dean smiled. "Dude, you caught a shifter because his eyes flashed in a camera, avoided being poisoned by some sedating chow, took out a handful of guards, including monsters, with nothing but your bare hands and a silver rosary, and then enacted a prison break during a massacre, while saving the asses of a medic, a guard and a fellow hunter, then ended a fish taco who wanted to suck our fat. You aren't rusty at all. I'm just hoping I can keep up with you."

They shared a laugh, and then Dean was patting his cheek fondly. He nodded at the medic, and slipped out to find Bobby and Cole.

Benny's gaze sought Sam's. "Bedroom?"

"Way ahead of you."

Benny chuckled.


	16. While the World Ends

The strike had to be surgical. The leviathans were nastier and smarter than anything Bobby had ever seen. A mass frontal attack would never work. That was why the demons were nearly useless. Stealth was not their strong point. 

Except for this one. Bobby frowned at him as the demon in the literary agent suit appeared beside him. He hurried to put his hand on Cole's arm. "It's all right, boy. He's one of us." He shuddered. "Need a shower after saying that."

Crowley smirked at him. "Time for your next bath, Singer? My, how the year does fly by."

Bobby stared him down. "You done, your majesty? Because I would like to get this job finished, and go back to being on opposite sides as soon as possible."

The dark man nodded once. "I'll miss our little chats, you ingrate." He glanced at Cole briefly. "Let's move, shall we?"

"My pieces are in play."

"As are my pawns," Crowley responded with a sigh. "I needed a bit of a purge anyway." 

"Boo hoo. You brought this on yourself. You brought it on all of us. So suck it up and take your lumps, Princess."

Crowley sneered at him. "King," he bit back, then he snapped his fingers to blink away again. 

Cole stared. "What the hell was that?"

Bobby sighed. "King of Hell. Monarch of Malevolence. Limey little bitch."

"Oh." Cole nodded shakily. "Got it."

"You ready, boy?"

"Yes, sir."

Bobby smiled. The Winchester boys were not always the best judges of character. But here and there, they brought home a stray that felt like he belonged. 

"We're in position, Lestrade. The game is afoot."

Bobby snickered at the radio. "Charlie, you gotta stop watching Netflix, child."

"Uncle Bobby!" she whined. "I told you! For this mission, you have to call me Molly!"

"Apparently I'm Mycroft," Kevin sighed over the device. "And the doc here is Watson. Crowley, of course, is Moriarty. Rufus and Garth are Moffat and Gatiss. Your special ops guy is Anderson because we don't know yet if we like him."

"Mycroft!" Charlie scolded. 

Cole smirked and leaned in to the microphone. "I appreciate being included," he laughed. "You okay, Doc?"

A thick drawl crackled over the speaker. "Ain't Watson the one that nearly dies every book?"

"Everybody quiet! Sherlock and Holmes are moving in. Radio silence!"

Bobby smiled. The world was ending, but wasn't it always? These two young people were extremely good at what they did, and there wasn't anything wrong with them playing while they did it. Sam and Dean should have gotten more of a chance to play. The world was brutal and bloody, and it would be brutal and bloody again tomorrow. Maybe Bobby was mellowing in his old age, or maybe it was just two and a half years of listening to Kevin and Charlie while missing his boys, but he found that he didn't mind the playing. That was what they were trying to save in the world anyway, wasn't it?

Kevin had been first. He had actually been doing research at Princeton when he stumbled onto a server that Frank Devereaux was watching. Frank had alerted Bobby, who had gotten in contact with the kid in his FBI persona, to scare him away from digging deeper. To his surprise, Kevin had immediately identified Bobby as a fraud, based on the fact that his facial hair and badge were out of regulation with the Bureau, and several other tiny details weren't quite in order. Bobby had been impressed, both with the kid's intelligence, and his courage. When he demanded to know what the deal was with Frank's code words like "poltergeist" and "lycanthrope," Bobby had taken a chance and introduced the boy to the world of supernatural monsters, and offered him the chance to apprentice. 

As far as Princeton and his mother were aware, Kevin had left to intern with the FBI. 

Kevin had found Charlie. The girl had been breaking into Republican Super PACs and releasing damaging corporate secrets under the hacker name QueenB4Moondor. Kevin had followed her movements even prior to joining up with Bobby, and had been entirely smitten. When he had finally made contact, and Charlie had teamed up with them as a protégé of Frank's, he had gotten his heart broken when he had learned that he was definitely not Charlie's type. But they had become fast friends, and their mutual hard work had yielded the secrets (and the bunker) of the Men of Letters. 

That treasure trove was what would save them all from the leviathan invasion. Bobby and his team had been tireless in their research once they had been contacted by the King of Hell in desperation. Today would be the day it would all come together. 

Bobby was grateful beyond words that his boys were safe and free. But he was also relieved they would be the ones to take out the monster Dick. There was no other pair of hunters in the world he trusted more. And they trusted him. He gave them the job, and they took it on faith that Bobby was right. 

Now his boys were marching up to slay the nastiest monster any of them had ever known, and they had never had such a show of support behind them. 

Bobby was pretty damn proud.


	17. Taking it all back

Sam had to admit that it felt amazing to be on the job again. He loved that he and Dean were still completely in synch. He had worried that was something they could lose forever. But it turned out, just like after Stanford, their time in prison had done nothing to break their connection. They still made a beautiful team. 

Working with demons seemed like the worst idea Bobby had ever had, but as Sam watched black smoke pour endlessly into the building, he was forced to recognize the benefit. Immediately, they could tell the humans from the monsters, based on who ran screaming from the scene and who unhinged terrifying jaws to fight back. Rufus and Garth, Bobby and Cole, were busy getting as many humans as possible to the door while Sam and Dean slashed their way through the big mouths. Each hunter was armed with a machete and borax, each of which seemed fairly potent weapons, though Bobby had assured them it was only a temporary fix. 

Sam listened to Dean's footsteps, to his breaths. He could feel them each letting out the rage of being penned like animals for years. Bobby had said these were the things that had locked them away, who had dehumanized them; who had leashed them and threatened them with one another. Each of them took out the fury of seeing his brother in shackles on every leviathan who came near.

And then there it was. The face they had memorized. 

The monster formerly known as Victor Henricksen was cowering behind Dick Roman, borax eating at his face like acid as he stared in fear at his leader. There was another glaring and barking orders at his underlings. Dick Roman himself was staring out in disgust at the melee. 

Sam felt his teeth bare in a feral grin. "Dean!"

The second in command met Sam's eyes. "Winchesters," he snarled. "Chet!"

With that, a fourth leviathan, this one smaller and sneering, flew into the laboratory offices. He spat black smoke out of his mouth, and ran at the hunters. But a blade from behind sliced through his neck before he could reach them. When the body dropped, Bobby nodded at Sam, then disappeared back into the fray. 

Roman growled. "Edgar? Your test rats are beginning to test my patience."

"Yes, sir," the other muttered, and he moved toward the hunters himself. Sam took the head that should have belonged to a doggedly ambitious FBI agent, then turned to find his brother battling the one called Edgar while Roman stalked toward Sam. 

"Sammy!" 

The younger man backed away from the murderous grin, and threw the last of his borax at Edgar. It gave Dean the moment he needed to take its head off and whirl on Dick Roman. 

Adrenaline pounded through Sam. The sounds of battle filled his ears, and the smell of blood and chemicals filled his nostrils. 

"Did you really think you could succeed where God's soldiers, Heaven's most terrifying weapon, failed so spectacularly? You stupid cattle belong in pens!"

Something snapped inside Sam Winchester then. He threw his entire bulk at the creature, whipping it around to face Dean's wicked glare. He dropped his weapons to take a vicious grip on Roman's hair, and yanked until his throat was prone for his brother. As Dean threw Kevin Tran's magic bone into the thing's throat, Sam hissed into its ear. "We're hunters, you son of a bitch. No cage can hold us."

He let go of the monster as Dean let go of the weapon, and they stood together to stare warily at the pulsing originating from the leviathan leader. Before they could even glance at one another, they felt hands grab hold of their collars and pull them to the floor, out of the radius of a strange blast of power. 

Bobby shook his head at them. "You two are killing me. Can we please get out of here?"

They scrambled to their feet and hurried through the chaos after the older hunter. Demons and monsters clashed wildly, and Sam caught a glimpse of a dark man in a tailored suit stop an assault with a flick of his wrist. Garth was pulling the arm of a grinning Rufus, who was delighted at the effect his borax bombs, as Kevin had called them, were having on the enemies before him. Sam snickered. Borax grenade launchers weren't exactly standard hunter weapons. He had to give the new kid credit where it was due. He was creative. 

Cole flew past with a civilian over his shoulder. "Last of them, sir!" he shouted. 

Bobby nodded. "Go! Go!"

Sam counted heads as soon as they hit the air outside. He nearly burst into tears when he realized all of Bobby's team was accounted for. Rufus, Sam, Bobby and Dean became human barriers between the chaos inside the building and the civilians gathered outside it. Garth and Cole rushed those who were injured to Kevin, Charlie and Benny. Sirens wailed in the background, and black smoke plumed from what was now a burning building. 

Garth shouted to the others. "Hey, guys? If Kevin's right, the leviathans will all either get sucked into Purgatory or be vulnerable to Crowley's minions now. We've done what we came to do! We Garthed the big guy, right?"

Dean turned to stare. "We what?"

Bobby rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Roman's done. He's right. Let's get out of here before someone wants an explanation we ain't got."

Sam gestured to the small crowd of disoriented humans. "What about them?"

Rufus shook his head. "They'll be all right now. We're fugitives, remember?"

Sam nodded. He looked at Dean for his call. 

Dean was watching Bobby. "Those demon pals won't hurt these people?"

"As I understand it, they will be hurrying off to Hell to lick their wounds the minute they can. Let's get gone."

***

Dean finally made good on his promise to stay out late to celebrate his freedom. Sam received a photo of him winking and grinning on his phone at about midnight. He chuckled to himself, then hissed in pain. 

"Hold still," Benny muttered irritably. "I'm nearly done."

"I don't remember your bedside manner being-ouch!-being bitchy back in the clinic."

"Because I wasn't literally on your bedside then. Now that I finally know what you look like not beat up, it's real mean of you to go break that pretty body of yours up again."

He smiled. "Just some scrapes."

Benny snorted. "This bite had been any deeper, you'd have been hunting without an arm!"

"Any fight you walk away from," he reminded him. 

The others had patched up, then celebrated their win with booze and banter. Dean had driven Cole to meet back up with his family, then stopped for some company. Bobby and Rufus were sitting, surrounded by three kids who thought they were the greatest living heroes, regaling them with stories of hunts long past. Sam and Benny had slipped back into their room. 

It was quiet now, at least in their part of the bunker. Outside, there was family. Beyond that were other monsters. But inside their tiny home, Sam and Benny were safe and free, and they were together.


	18. Safe at Home

Benny hated to see something as beautiful and courageous as Sam in pain. It had been hard enough in the prison. Now, he felt every cringe in his own heart. 

Once he had finished scolding the man for his injuries, he set to work caring for him. His hands worshipped every inch of his long, incredible body. Every time he looked, he found Sam's eyes staring up at him in awe. He hoped one day his hunter would come to expect the way Benny wanted to treat him. Until then, the way he watched him with gratitude and adoration made Benny want to give him every ounce of pleasure and love his body could handle. 

This was a man who ran into burning buildings to save people. This was a man who fought against monsters that frightened even demons. This was a man who worried that he wasn't smart enough or good enough for his crazy old genius redneck father figure, and who was fiercely protective of his tough as nails badass big brother. This was the man who stepped up to defend a skinny, awkward dentist before he ever suspected the dentist could possibly help him in any way, let alone team up with him to save the world. This was the man Benny intended to love and hold his whole life. 

"How are you feeling, darling?" Benny whispered. 

Sam sighed at him happily. "How could I feel anything but good with you here, Doc?"

He chuckled quietly. His strong hands moved down his hunter's chest to play at the sensitive skin on his belly. 

"Benny? Why are you still here?"

He looked up in surprise, and found Sam's eyes filling with tears, and his lips trembling. "Sam?"

"Dean offered to take you home too. I know he did. I could see the guilt on his face when he looked at me, like reminding you that you're safe and free to go was somehow betraying me. Then he and Cole left, and you're still here. Why? What's wrong with you, man?" The first tears escaped to slide down his cheeks. "You got no sense of self-preservation?" This came with a bitter laugh. "This ain't a life, Doc. I'm no lover. I'm a hunter. And...and I'm so grateful that you stayed one more night-so grateful you wouldn't believe, but...but in the morning, you're going home. To your normal, safe life. I'm back where I belong. You gotta go back where you belong too."

Benny heaved a deep sigh, and leaned down to kiss Sam's trembling belly. "Sam, truth is, you've only known me a few days. We got close real fast, but really, you don't know nothing about me. So when I say this, I expect it'll take you a long while before you understand what it means for me to say it."

Sam swallowed hard and sniffed. There was pain and fear mixing into those dark eyes, as he waited. 

"Sam, I wore dark sunglasses every day for two years because I was either hungover or numb. I spent every day going through the motions until I could get back to drunk. I saw patients, I treated them, and somehow I never screwed up, but I lived in constant fear that one day I would, that I would miss something or over-prescribe or misread a chart or just not hear a patient well enough because I wasn't all there. I didn't drink during the day. Never. But I spent all day, every day, with something crawling in my skin. Now I been sober a long time, but it ain't gone. It'll never be gone. But I don't feel it so intensely when I'm with you. I can give my full focus when I'm with you. Sam, I realized today that with everything going on, between preparing to take care of folks till EMTs could get to them and patching you up, I didn't think about taking a drink even one time. I'm not thirsty with you. So if you think I'm safer at home, you're just wrong."

Sam gasped in his breath and sobbed it out quietly. 

"In fact, if you think you ain't my home, you're just wrong. And anyway, how could either of us be safer than with my hunter looking after me, and your doc looking after you?"

He reached up to brush away the tears and kiss salty, desperate lips. 

"You want me to go, I will. But it's not better for me. Not at all. You send me away, and I know what's waiting for me. I don't think I got it in me to crawl out of a bottle twice, Sam. Please don't send me away. The monster that's waiting for me ain't nearly so cute and cuddly as those leviathans you and your brother tore up today. You save people. It's what you do, darling. Nobody ever needed you more than me."

Strong arms were around him now, holding him so tight neither of them could breathe, but then the hard hands were on his face, and the mouth was on his lips, and tears became soft laughter, and bitter smoothed into sweet. He felt Sam's smile in his kisses, felt his promises in his grip. 

"God, please don't go," Sam breathed into his throat. 

Sometimes, in moments of extreme danger, people said they saw their life flash before their eyes, and Benny had always assumed that meant a review of their past. Now, in a moment of extreme relief, he got a glimpse of his future. Mornings spent cooking breakfast while Dean chattered nearby about a call he had gotten from Cole regarding some strange activity on his radar that might need checking out. Evenings spent listening to Bobby grumble about the mission code names the kids were laughing over-and why was he always the old guy in Charlie's mind? Afternoons spent hearing confirmation from Kevin that Rufus was still alive and bitching about Garth and Frank, then discussing the next job on the list. And nights. Nights spent just like this, wrapped in a hunter's embrace, knowing he was loved, thirsting only for his touch. 

Benny had found his home. He wasn't giving it up without a fight.


End file.
